What if the years 1919 and 1968 had a baby?
Oh.
— Laura Bucci (@BucciSays) May 30, 2020
As I type this on the Monday morning after the riots, I find myself at a loss for words.
Which is a tragedy for a writer. After all, I moved this blog away from (temporarily, I hope) being mostly about writing and weird history into current events and politics simply because ignoring the pandemic is not only living in fairyland but as a history buff I feel obliged to leave a record.
But my posts on the coronavirus include my opinions but precious little about what I feel. Recitations of facts and dates: so many coronavirus cases by this day, a list of things opening up in phase I, etc.
Except that last one (my county started phase I today as of 6 am) seems so insignificant in the face of all the rioting.
Understand: after the umpteenth example of police brutality against black people protesting is called for and completely understandable. I’m even finding it hard to fault violent protests – when you shove people into a corner for generations you can’t really expect much better. Trashing a police station must feel really good if you’ve spent a lifetime fearing the police.
But then I read that a lot of the looting was likely due to outside actors – likely privileged white kids or outright white supremacists taking advantage of the chaos. And cops attacking not only protestors but quiet neighborhoods and journalists just trying to do their jobs. It’s not clear who’s doing what, or why.
No, I’m not going to link to any of this; you have the same Google-fu I do and I’m running on 5 hours sleep. That, and there’s just so damn much of it that I haven’t had the chance to figure out what’s news, what’s crap, what’s speculation, and what’s outright propaganda.
Short version: I’m numb. I have no observations that others haven’t made far more cogently than I could, I have no deep-rooted feelings of rage or fear or anything else because I’ve tripped over all that into just staring into space.
Are we going to have another civil war? I don’t know. I’ve never lived through a pre-war situation before. Never lived through a pandemic either. Nothing I’ve experienced has prepared me for all this, so as far as I’m concerned all bets are off.
What will I do? I’ll go back to posting silly memes and black humor because I have to find something to laugh at to keep going. If I’m really smart I’ll take a break from social media. But I doubt I’ll be that smart.
I’ll make donations to food banks and Black Lives Matter and keep making my masks because I need to feel effective in some way (wait a minute, there’s a feeling! Or is it just an artifact of my general anxiety?)
I’ll binge watch something fun and familiar to make sure I stay at numb and don’t trip over into paralyzed because work and laundry and breakfast still have to happen no matter what.
Writing? Pfft. I’ll try. It’s hard to care or see the point, let alone summon the depth of feeling to write compelling fiction.
But I can’t stop any of this. I can’t fix it. I’m stuck in react mode.
We’re barely at the halfpoint of 2020 and it’s a shitshow.
What will you do?