Within the span of weeks, society’s scaffolds have fallen away as nations kneel before the new coronavirus. No one wants to talk or read about Covid-19, but at the same time it’s all we can talk and read about. The sudden brokenness, for me, has cracked open a different way of thinking about my own creative writing.
Each morning I wake there is a moment, while still suspended by sleep, I forget the new realities: isolating at home; the essentialness—and shortage—of masks and gloves; the importance of physical distances between people. As the bliss of sleep-induced amnesia evaporates, the realisation crashes in: the world we moved in no longer exists.
As a public health professional, these last weeks commanded almost all my waking hours. Creative writing practice was impossible; there was neither time nor peace of mind to do it. Remarkably, the guilt that normally accompanies a break in practice (and eclipses better thoughts) didn’t happen. Instead, it has been a relaxed fall into inevitability; there is no controlling the uncontrollable. I feel resigned. I feel forgiven.
So, when I returned to my writings the other day, for solace, to begin with, I reviewed the writings of the last half year with openness and possibility. Only in this way, was I able to see how much of my writing practice circles round a central theme. What I had taken to be sperate, disparate ideas, are really pieces of something whole… something I haven’t quite figured out yet, but clearly, I’m moving toward (or through). It feels like an epiphany. It feels like I’m on the right path, even though I don’t know where it’s going.
It has also changed my world view. For the first time, I feel optimistic about how, when the virus crawling continents relaxes its grip on our communities, the world might put itself back together differently. Perhaps in a way that is healing to the earth. Perhaps in a way that is inclusive and fair. It is up to us to imagine it and build it. For the first time, in a long time, I feel it’s possible to do so.
Process Peace 