PANDEMIC STORIES

 

Or—

THIS STORIED PANDEMIC

At the two-year mark of the first Covid-19 global pandemic lockdowns, it occurred to me that this life altering event has barely registered in books, movies, TV-series or any of the many ways we tell the stories of our lives.

Where it’s missing most is in children’s books.

The global pandemic brought not only lockdowns with their school closures, but also face masks, vaccinations, and protests against both. It made older relatives spend their last days without family, and some families that lived and worked entirely from home. It ushered shifting directions from authorities, travel restrictions, fluctuating supply chain shortages, and daily experts' updates that often added to confusion.

But most of all, there was prevailing fear.

This not-brave new world we found ourselves in should have been a feast for storytellers. (“So, what else is new?” “PLENTY.”)

Instead, it’s as if we can’t digest any of it, and thus we keep producing reflections that bypass the elephant in the room

At the very beginning of this game-changing reality, I wrote a picture book that told of it; a pet chinchilla found that it couldn’t go outside. Using animal protagonists is a way of distancing hard realities while also giving them full emotional agency.

My then-agent felt it would all be over soon, and so it was never shopped to editors. I understood agent’s point. But I also thought that regardless of whether it be a brief episode— barely a snippet in time, or one that lasts a while, it has a place in stories.

Especially for the youngest readers, who barely remember how it was before.

The FUTURE?

The other day, a writing friend said it was hard for him to write to an unknown future.

I offered that the future, by definition, is unknown.

“But with all that is going on, it’s hard to plan,” he said.

True.

My suggestion, which is also what I do, is plan anyway.

There’s a paraphrasing of an old Islamic Hadith, said by Martin Luther King Jr., “Even if I knew the world is going to end tomorrow, I would plant a tree."

Works for me.

What does this mean in real life context? I’m writing, while making sure we have enough toilet paper for the next who-knows-what. I can’t plan for every shortage, so if the next one will center on hairnets, tea or open-toe sandals, I may not have a sufficient stash. But I will have toilet paper, and also writing paper, and enough sense to know that there’s never a better time to plant a tree.

Onwards.

The Last Few Months

A writer friend reminded me that as different as these last few months have been, for many of us they were more the same as the pre-pandemic world.

Because books are books, and stories are stories, and the things that matter are very much the same.

But the publishing world is trying to access what is different, not what is as before. As they do so, those of us who want to be published are swinging in the breeze of changing winds.

To that end, I’d love to hear from others. Have you found that you are reading/watching differently? Have your book-buying habits changed? If you could rule the publishing world, what do you wish you could find on virtual shelves?

Maybe the most surprising thing, for me, is that at the height of the rapid closures and public tension I found it hard to focus on reading or writing original stories. But shortly after, (shortly here means about eight weeks) the ability to be a reader and also a writer returned with aplomb. What about you?

Replacing the Handshake

Or—

New Etiquette for the New World

A pandemic caused us to behave differently while wondering which or what of the old ways we may keep. One of the first things to go was the handshake.

You know, that thing the ancient Greeks developed to show an approaching stranger you are not armed and can be trusted. That thing young people had to practice so they can do well on job interviews. Firm, but not too firm. Spirited, without being too energetic as to cause a concussion. There you go, just right.

Apparently, it isn’t anymore. Neither is the elbow bump, that touching of the very place we’re instructed to cough into. The Far East’s light head-bow with hand on one’s heart (I always found this elegant and touching) is one fine new way.

There’s also new etiquette for virtual gatherings, a la Zoom and such. There’s new etiquette for how to walk on the street. Hence, there are new requirements for storytelling. Movies shot before look downright historic.

It’s hard to know how much will stick with humanity for the longer run. But considering how long we’ve kept the handshake, (well after the knife-in-hand lost its prevalence) it’s likely we’ll have a few new etiquette rules added to our collective vocabulary.

A friend made the observation that in her childhood she used to ask her mother why grandma saved every piece of string.

“Grandma lived through the Great Depression,” her mom explained.

Someday, our grandkids will ask why Grandma wipes grocery bags with bleach, and our kids would explain that we lived through the Great Pandemic.

Storytellers are watching, and everyone is learning.

What Will We Write?

Or

What Will They read?

It’s a big question mark for writers for a post-pandemic period. What will readers read, and hence, what should we be writing?

No doubt, it’s the big five-W questions again.

What?

The pandemic, of course. The one with the number nineteen in its name, though it’s mostly a twenty-twenty event

When?

When sheltering in place and wiping grocery bags with bleach will be in the rear view mirror

Where?

Here, there, and most everywhere. But not, in fact, in the same way everyplace.

Who?

Human beings on every continents save Antarctica, that’s who L

Why?

Religious leaders and some environmentalists already have global moralistic explanations to the "why" of it. I will stay away from such like the plague that this sort of thinking is. The book of Job says it best: we can seek “reasons” but should avoid thinking we ultimately have any handle on moralistic global explanations.

And now, back to the ranch. The place where stories are born and typed, which (for me) is the corner of my room in the corner of my home.

I heard that some people were drawn to stories about plagues. Not me. I had no intention of re-reading Albert Camus’ The Plague, or watching movies like Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion or re-watching Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak. No way. Nah-ah. Not.

In the thick of sheltering in place and leaving home as little as possible to get groceries from markets with empty shelves, all I cared to read, watch, and listen to were stories about normal times. Stories with people who greet each other with a hug, and gather to listen to music in large halls, and go out to restaurants where others’ talking made it necessary to raise your voice for conversation. "Normal," like always.

When we’re back to normal, it may be a modified normal. But stories written before will only need slight changes, not seem downright anachronistic like they do now. Of course, there will be novels with this experience in the background. Stories about how some coped, while others frayed at the seams. They’ll likely include the requisite one person dying in each. But I hope that in less time than anyone imagines at the moment stories will return for the most part to where we left them, way back in the historic time of the Fall of 2019.

©Chaim Goldberg Art

The Universality of Experience

If nothing else, (and there’s plenty else) a pandemic brings home the universality of experience.

There will be time to reflect and assess whether we under-reacted, overreacted, were prepared or not and coped or not.

Right now all such assessments feel premature and sadly too political. Quarrelsomeness is part of our species. But so is mobilization and co-operation.

Which is what I’m focusing on, as friends all over the globe post Corona Outerwear Fashion:

A friend in South Korea^ (They were ahead!)

A sister in Israel^ (She makes these herself)

A friend in Madagascar^

A friend in Maine, USA^

And yours truly in California, USA^

I’m determined to return to musing about writerly and other life things next week. These, too, are universal and there lies the value of shared thoughts.

Can hardly wait to say Bye-Bye to COVID-19. Let’s meet on the other side.

Corona Cheers

I’ve been a sort-of fan of Jay Leno ever since I saw him live in a New York City comedy club way back when he was not famous or the “Jay Leno” America knows from television. He was young, odd looking (thus, memorable) and I, of course, was practically a toddler J

In a long line of stand-up comics that night, he was the only one who so much as made the audience chuckle. Actually, he made us laugh.

So a little while ago, I saw him interviewed by Bill Maher, and his Corona-humor made me laugh again. I rarely remember jokes, and there was a whole string of them. But the first one stuck, and I’m passing it along.

Bill Maher commented that Jay Leno is a “glass half-full” sort of guy. Then he asked how Leno was doing, dealing with COVID-19.

“Sure, I’m optimistic,” Leno said. “The other day I saw Doctor Fauci say, ‘this is a war and we must fight it like one.’ So the reporters asked him ‘how do we do that?’ and Doctor Fauci said, ‘by staying home and watching TV.’”

To this, Leno added, “If there is any war Americans are qualified and thoroughly prepared for it’s the one fought with staying home and watching TV.”

Kind of comforting, I think.

Keep up the fight, fellow folks all over the land.

Writing in Past Tense Means PERSPECTIVE

Storytellers are in a good position to know that a day will come when things as they are today will feel different. We write most stories in the past tense, and this contains the notion that sometime later the events feel/look/are different.

Perspective is embedded in storytelling. Not only by use of the past tense, but in the convention that events have resolutions. Even when they don’t have clear “finally, all’s well”— there is at the very least a coming to terms with what had passed.

I am using this honed skill as best I can, and it works. It helps navigate the challenges of a global pandemic and lives interrupted. Not being a young’un helps also, even if me and mine are at greater risk as we get wiser.

It also helps that I work alone from home even in normal times, (which weren’t that long ago, and will return G-d willing soon) and for all the scary stuff pouring out of every pore of the Internet beast, there are places of respite and I know where to find them.

I’m not going to put the now internet-ubiquitous “stay safe, everyone" out here, because life is inherently not safe. Everyone knows how to be a bit safer, and you don’t need the guilt of imperfection of conduct. I know you’re doing the best you can and that’s good.

But I do plea for perspective. Someday soon, this pandemic will be in the past.

{Brought to you by the letter P ⇧⇩😉}

~PEACE~

©Shelagh Duffett

Historical (not Hysterical) Perspective Needed

Though the global response and economic shut-down feels unprecedented for any who haven’t lived through the great depression or the last world war, (not many of them left) it is not the world’s end nor the end of history, and more than ever we need to know humanity’s past to regain perspective.

I’ve always loved historical fiction. My published novel is one such, about a traumatic episode when at one time and place a feeling that annihilation could be immanent saturated the air. I lived that one, and lived to write about it some years later.

My father had survived a far greater trauma. My mother remembered the Great Depression as something from her childhood that left her frugal for the rest of her life. We have many in our midst who lived through historic shifts in their countries of origin, some still ongoing.

From where I stand right now, I don’t feel the current crisis is in the magnitude of any of the above. But, of course, it’s the unknown-unknown while it’s ongoing. So my ‘”hunch” or feeling only matter to the way I conduct myself, while G-d knows what G-d knows.

Here’s my bit of perspective: As storytellers, we who write will have even more to mine. Stories are an integral part of humanity and always needed. I feel a responsibility not to contribute to fear, and while doing the right common sense things also keep notes and document this event for the future. This doesn’t mean specifically “COVID-19 Tales,” but observations of human behaviors, the good and noble and the less good, for future literary exploration.

The one sure thing is that it will pass. It will be history. Then, we’ll say (as the French do) “Quelle histoire!” (=”What a story!”)

In the meantime, I strive to stay well and most of all to stay generous. Same to you, everyone.