The Subtle Horror the Novel CoronaVirus

4/27/2020

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror V has a segment where Homer time travels to the past and kills a bug, thus irrevocably changing the past, future and all of reality. He can not return to the life he knows, but quantum leaps through a series of different scenarios of what would be his life, but each is a disparate world within a multi-universe. After an exhaustive journey he ends up at his table where everything seems the same except his family eats with reptilian tongues. He shrugs. “Close enough.” 

These days – these of recent past and not so distant future – are like the spring days of most previous years. The Spring in Milwaukee is late and hesitant. Skies vary between gray and corn blue. There was sun and rain. And snow. But spring came. Children returned to walking to school and playing outside afterwards. Joggers tentatively changed their routines from static treadmills to new routes out of doors. At long last, winter had let loose it’s icy grasp and the world awakened anew. Anew. 

But there is something slightly different this year. Our reality is now a movie that is set in the not-so-distant future, accented with a slight tinge of science fiction. You are living it, but also conscious of your presence within it. An actor watching himself through his audience’s eyes. It feels real – like normal life – but we are also in on the joke – just barely – enough to know that there is a twist. Everything is very similar to how it should be, but you are checking out the characters cellphones or their weapon tech to orient yourself. Like the Minority Report. Or Her. Everything is very similar to how it should be. But there’s a twist lurking – a shoe waiting to drop. Or the characters seem a little robotic. Soulless. Dead-eyed. A waking dream.

A low hum of menace.

There is a surprisingly earnest or efforted amount of acceptance – aside from right wing protesters – but people are trying to accept the new reality like a positive family putting on a good face as they struggle to welcome the boorish, new amore of their precious daughter at Thanksgiving dinner. People have rolled up their sleeves, conjuring in their own mind’s eyes the efforts and sacrifices of greater generations. They sewed and shared masks, planted Liberty Gardens, shyly kept six feet of separation from family and friends. They trained themselves to resist the urge to shake hands and hug, retaught themselves to wash, really wash, their hands (God what were even doing before?!) and at last have accepted the things they could not change, and they dug deep to find the courage to change what they must and pray for wisdom from our leaders.

Things that we count on for normalcy have changed or gone away. Entire sports schedules are postponed. Tournaments are cancelled. School years wiped out, graduations have gone virtual, no one is getting pregnant at prom. 

Watching sports during the Pandemic is a little like going to London and trying to turn into American sports. The sport channels exist, but they are planning different games. Their national pastimes are not ours. Back in America during these Pandemic days, hope should spring eternal. But instead of baseball we find arena motor sports and sports greatest games. 

You take a walk, and the mask of Wisconsin Friendly, tries its best to hang on. But it is slipping, exhausted and ghoulish, like a patient wheeled out of cosmetic surgery. The smile is more menacing, teeth gnashed tightly together, the eyes squint not along laugh lines, but creases of weathered solemnity. 

Besides the shift from normalcy we find in our neighbors, there is also the new fact that They are amongst us. The asymptomatic zombies, hosts of the parasitic virus – knowing or unknowing, but always concealed. And, too, the pundits live amongst us – inlaws mostly – but any smug know-it-all who has replaced empathy with cold logic – a one-size-fits-all approach to telling everyone how to live their lives. Economy now! Money over man. 

Then the curtain silently falls – the cheerful deniability, the facade. The center cannot hold. These days are no longer a fresh change of pace even to optimists. It is far graver and longer lasting. Nothing is eternal, but we now realize that nothing from our previous life is guaranteed. In many ways, our lives, our habits, what we take for granted have all skewed. To move forward without driving ourselves crazy, we have to swallow it and shrug.

Close enough.