Goodbye To All That
In this edition of my COVID-19 Diaries I traipse from a viral theory of the earworm, through new possibilities of doing nothing, into an account of my first ‘Pair Up’ call.
24th March 2020:
I went to the supermarket with a wheely suitcase today. I don’t have one of those grandma shopping bag/carts, so one must be resourceful with what one has. Nobody else seems to be doing this that I have seen. Perhaps because the sound of those suitcase wheels is so disturbing you have to play music through headphones on the way there and back just to drown it out.
Another recovered word; piety.
Devotion. Strong belief in a religion that is shown in the way someone lives. A conventional belief or standard.
Corona piety? We are renunciating and we are trying to love thy neighbours. Never before have so many smiles been exchanged with those in the surrounding apartments. The virus is making us nicer.
There is a poster on this wall that is starting to really bug me. The previous tenant left it here. It’s by a Swiss artist, and he said we could take it down if we want. There are days when I don’t see it, and days when it is all I see. The phone bothers me far more than the penis. That gross device manifesting all over his naked languid pose and pointing towards the room. I should really take it down but every day I tell myself ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’. There are lots of procrastinations now. Because now (which is really no different than before) we have an excess of healthy tomorrows to put task to. All the time in the world to do chores or make work or achieve those niggly actions that one avoids until it’s too irritating to bear. This poster must not have become totally unbearable yet. Perhaps soon enough it will be too much a part of this room, and this time, to say goodbye to. ‘Goodbye To All That’, Joan Didion’s title for the last piece in her Slouching Towards Bethlehem collection of essays. Those four words ring and ring in my head like an earworm.