COVID-19 – Page 2 – twenty-one words

The life ahead of you

April 12, 2020April 23, 2022Posted in a thought, anxiety, Autumn, blogging, books, coronavirus, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, moments of beauty, nature, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, solace, South Australia, staying humble, staying true, the sky, writingTagged coronavirus, COVID-192 Comments

Other people’s words about … distance

They raised their glasses. The room smelt of wine and bread and gravy, and the light was rich and dim.

Geraint didn’t answer.

‘I thought a change of scene … ‘ said Basil. ‘A long voyage on an ocean liner [to India]. Full of hopeful beautiful women,’ he added, daring.

Geraint read Kipling. He thought of the mystery of India, the jungle, the light, the colours, the creatures. The complexities of the silver dealings. The distance. He was, he saw, in need of distance. And his imagination touched on the beautiful young women sailing across dark starlit oceans in search of husbands. A journey like that made you free, made you a different man.

From ‘The Children’s Book’
by AS Byatt

Just a few weeks ago, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world we’re living in now would have seemed like something straight out of the pages of a science fiction novel. But then life changed — abruptly, shockingly — and here we are now, living out our strange, new lives. Trying to make sense of our days.

Having no words, myself, for any of this, I have spent my Easter seeking solace in other people’s words. There is no better novel I can think of that describes the kind of vast, sudden change we are experiencing right now than The Children’s Book. In it, AS Byatt chronicles the lives of the members of a family living in Edwardian England as they move, unknowingly, towards 1914 and the outbreak of the First World War … and the end of the world as they knew it.

‘I should like that, sir,’ [Geraint] said. ‘You have been very kind to me.’

Basil said, ‘It was a fortunate day for me when you came into the Bank. You are too young to be fixed by one setback. You have all your life in front of you. The world in front of you.’

Geraint set his [broken heart] against the pull of the oceans and the strange continent. He could feel his own energy stirring.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘You are right. Thank you.’

To say anything more about how Geraint’s life changes shortly after this conversation, or about how wrong Basil’s pronouncements turn out to be, would be to give away the whole, shocking point of this novel. All I will say is this: sometimes we are wrong about the world we live in, and about the lives that we believe lie ahead of us.

Sometimes, as Byatt describes, we are terribly, terribly wrong.

At the end of this post, I’ve listed a few of the pieces I’ve read online recently, during this strange, uneasy Easter weekend. I’ve listed them here in case you, like me, find yourself speechless right now: in case you, like me, find yourself seeking solace in other people’s words.

But there’s one other thing I want to leave you with today. This morning, I wandered into my garden — my small, messy, rambling suburban garden, which is more of a yard with some trees I planted in it, really, than a garden — and glanced up through the leaves at the sky. And there, above me, was the sun shining through, distant but warm.

I captured that moment in the photo that accompanies this post. It shows another kind of distance from the one Geraint believes he is entitled to reach out towards. It shows, I want to say, another kind of solace.

The light shining through

Lately I’ve been reading …

… But if [this pandemic] really were a war, then who would be better prepared than the US? If it were not masks and gloves that its frontline soldiers needed, but guns, smart bombs, bunker busters, submarines, fighter jets and nuclear bombs, would there be a shortage?: Arundhati Roy on the spread of COVID-19 across India.

… Maybe life could keep going on, I thought. It would be okay. The headlines were worse than reality. Of course, I was naïve. It only took a few days for everything to change: Gabrielle Bellot on her experience of COVID-19, and how we turn to stories about plague for both horror and comfort.

… We introduced ourselves and shook hands. Remember handshakes?: Lauren Markham on writing, grief, isolation, sickness and fear … and travelling on trains.

… I’m doing my best. That’s all I can do, and all I can keep doing, for myself, my family, my community, our world. I’m trying, every day, to do my best. I promise to keep doing just that: Ali Feller, long-time blogger, runner, writer, New York resident, mother, wife and sufferer of Crohn’s disease, writing with her loveable, inimitable honesty about living through the pandemic one day at a time.

Feverish

April 2, 2020April 23, 2022Posted in a thought, anxiety, Autumn, books, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, nature, on writing, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, solace, South Australia, staying humble, staying true, walkingTagged coronavirus, COVID-19, health2 Comments

Other people’s words about … panic

Rumours washed over the city. The fever had ended. The fever [had] started again. A shipload of sick people was coming upriver. A cure had been found. No cure was available. An earthquake in the countryside left people saying the end of the world was at hand. The wells had been poisoned. The British were coming. I would have despaired of the hopelessness and confusion. Eliza dismissed the wild tales with a shake of her head.

‘They may be true,’ she said, ‘but we have work to do. Come now, Mattie.’

From ‘Fever 1793’
by Laurie Halse Anderson

I first read Laurie Halse Anderson’s wonderful novel for young adults about the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793 many years ago; and a copy of the book has sat on my shelves ever since. I pulled that copy out the other day and, in re-reading it, was reminded of the remarkable way history seems endlessly to repeat itself.

In some ways, as the coronavirus pandemic rages around the world, we are all, very suddenly, living in a strange new world. But in other ways, as Anderson’s novel reminded me, we are not. Sickness is nothing new; epidemics are nothing new; fear is nothing new. These crises occur over and over. Some of us survive them, and some of us don’t: these are the humdrum facts of human life.

Morning light

We will all have different ways of coping and responding to the current COVID-19 pandemic, depending partly on our health, partly on our situation, and partly on our own individual coping mechanisms. In Fever 1793, Anderson’s character Eliza responds to the epidemic she herself is living through in a way that I find particularly practical and matter-of-fact.

But we have work to do, she says. And indeed we do.

Grass tree standing tall, solitary and true

Lately I’ve been reading about …

… one writer’s experience of the coronavirus quarantine in Italy
… another writer’s experience of the coronavirus quarantine in Seattle, in the US
… a New York resident’s visual documentation of the coronavirus, as she photographs the world around her on her daily walk through the empty city streets
… and, last but not least, one cookbook author’s recommendations for how to stock your pantry for a period of self-isolation or quarantine without succumbing to panic buying or hoarding.

That place

March 22, 2020Posted in a thought, anxiety, Autumn, birds, blogging, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, life, moments of beauty, native coastal vegetation, nature, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, resilience, sea quotes, solace, South Australia, staying humble, staying true, the beach, the seaTagged bushfires, coronavirus, COVID-193 Comments

Other people’s words about … slowing down

He opened the window and let in the ocean, gulped in that grey air as though oxygen was enough to save him from the people in the house, watched the waves, noted the dark rip forming at the southern end of the beach. He ignored the sound of Charlie’s voice in the lounge, hilarious, oblivious, the sounds of the girl in the bathroom behind him, scrubbing insistently; called to mind the tentacles of the cloud from earlier, saw the colours he’d mix [if he were to paint it], the strokes, the shapes. After a few moments, his breathing slowed and he began to enter the place where no one else could come.

From‘Bluebottle‘
By Belinda Castles

It’s hard to know what to say, let alone what to write about, in times like this. Surely I am not alone in beginning to think of 2020 as the year of disasters — first, here in Australia, the bushfires; then, globally, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Low ebb

About the coronavirus, I have nothing useful to say. It is only just beginning to hit here in Australia, and — despite the chance that Australians had, over the last few weeks, to learn from people’s experiences of it in the northern hemisphere — it appears that we have done very little to protect ourselves. Though we are not yet in lockdown, I suspect we will be soon.

Birds of a feather

Before the coronavirus situation began to escalate here, I was lucky enough to have the chance to slip away for a few days to Kangaroo Island. The photos in this post are from those few days.

Half of the island — yes, half — was destroyed by the bushfires earlier this year. Even without the pandemic, it is a time of great sadness on the Island.

Exposed

But I have nothing to say about that sadness, either. Instead, my photographs here celebrate, I hope, the beauty of the unburned half of the Island. In times of sadness, we have to find things to celebrate, yes?

Enter that place

Also, to borrow Belinda Castles’s words from the quote above and to use them in a different context, we have to slow down, despite our panic; we have to breathe in fresh air. We have to turn inward, finding and enter[ing] that place where no one else [can] come.

In the end, we have to find a way, within ourselves, to survive.