Little Bug

It’s a virus, but also, it’s a portal. We’re in it now. We don’t know what life will be like on the other side. It could be different – better. It could be all the injustice and inequality is laid bare in a way that cannot be forgotten. Like seeing the pasty, sagging flesh of our naked emperor in microscopic detail. It could be that all the rules we follow because someone said so are swept away, because…why, exactly? It’s clear they could forgive student debt if they wanted to – they are giving money away to everyone right now, and there’s no reason it can’t be us. Except that they’ve taught us not to expect it, that we don’t deserve it, that we have bootstraps somewhere and we ought to use them. But the hedge funds, and the airlines, well, they deserve it, because…why, exactly?

The people in control want to keep control, and even in this pandemic they will try and throw just a few scraps to keep us just a little hungry and mostly quiet. I don’t know if we’ll accept them with a hearty “thank you, sire” this time. To me a revolution seems not far away. But I’m usually wrong.

For you and I it feels like a portal too. Not going to school frees you up to do things you really like – draw battleships, make cardboard models, learn German online. We have a dyslexia tutor who is working with you on Zoom. I really don’t see why you need to go back at all. At least not 10 hours a day like now.

We take a walk around the neighborhood everyday. We’ve talked to our neighbors more than in the last few years combined. On work breaks, I do yoga, or garden, or cook. And without all the meetings my work is pretty fast, not as stressful.

They say pollution has dropped exponentially without all the cars on the road, and just like us people have more time with their families without their commutes. They say you can hear birds (we can always hear birds in our neighborhood, thanks to the cemetery) and the water is clearer. We all know this is what we need, what we were asking for, only permanently.

That’s not to say there aren’t bad things, horrible things happening and about to happen, because there are. People getting sick, dying. It seems clear that those don’t have to be that way either. I’ve seen people ask that the prisoners be freed, and many of them may be. I’ve seen people ask that the immigrants be freed and maybe that will happen too. Maybe. In an instant we could wipe away centuries bad choices that we made, that we’re holding on to, because…why exactly?

I don’t know how to change the whole world, only that it’s possible, now more than ever, when all the cracks are so clear, letting in some needed light. And sometimes that is how change happens – not in a slow steady arc but in a ball of tension suddenly breaking free, like a rock out of a slingshot. That’s the portal I see us in. Sitting at that weightless moment where a finger has just let go.