It’s odd to me that despite how tedious and long the days seem when lived one by one, the weeks have melted into a haze. It seems as if the month of March never really happened. It’s April now and who knows what happened in March? It’s like 28 days later. I was walking around one day in February and then woke up in April. It speaks most likely to denied levels of fear and anxiety. The weight of COVID-19 subsumed everything else and any memories since this started seem distant and dim. I’m determined to find ways of making these long days and short months meaningful. There is a curve to be flattened there too. I don’t have a name for it yet but there’s small wonder that an entire month was rendered empty and meaningless. This can’t be all there is.

I was speaking once years ago to a fellow that had just spent several years in prison. He described the experience of the passage of time similarly. Time still passes but everything is on pause. Events outside seem distant, as if you were drifting in and out of sleep watching it all on television. Then you walk outside the first time and you have no real idea what to expect. You don’t know what really happened or what you watched or dreamed.

It’s not fair to entirely liken my experience of the last 4 weeks with that of someone who was incarcerated for years but the part about time resonates. The world I knew is at the very least on pause and things might never be the same. It’s time to create something that applies to now and filling this new space.