a concert in the balcony of anxiety / made of what has also always been inside of us
Got boosted, for which I am grateful. Grateful too for the relatively high vaccination rate in NYC, and that the friends and family in various places face fewer access hurdles by the day. Not entirely sure how to handle those folks who decline the opportunity to not endanger themselves and others, but "nah we can't lime" will do the job for now.
One December seemed like a lot. Will we be here again for the third time this time next year? What will that be like? I would prefer not to find out, but I know it is better to be prepared.
How heavy is the weight of five million deaths?
I confess I do not care about the endless tortured discussion that is "return to the office" because what I cannot stop thinking about is the reflexiveness of what we (for some values of we) cling to as normal (for some values of normal).
Sometimes, we is exclusive. Sometimes, we means us. Often, both those phrases mean the same thing.
There are always so many people we leave out. We mean well, we execute poorly. What if we were braver? What if we were better? What if we actively got out of the way of those with the courage and the savvy to be both of those? What if we got out of our own way, when it's us?
Perhaps you find yourself wondering if you are the baddie. A more useful question is, always, what can you differently?
Attribution:
There is, by every measure, reason for fear,
concern, a concert in the balcony of anxiety
made of what has also always been inside of us:
a kind of knowing that everything could break.
But it hasn’t quite yet and probably won’t.
What I mean to say is, I had a daydream
and got lost inside of it.
—from The Birds Outside My Window Sing During a Pandemic by Lee Herrick