My Pandemic Triptych

March 2021 is winding down, and we’ve been reading countless accountings of the pandemic’s one-year anniversary. I can distill my pandemic year in three images of entangled worlds and warped time.

PANEL 1 (Spring 2020): In the Lavatory of Late Capitalism. I was a latecomer to the Great U.S. Toilet Paper Panic of April 2020. By then the bathroom tissue shelves in grocery, pharmacy, and big box stores were as empty as the city streets. Social media chronicled the agony of no supply and the ecstasy of scoring rolls. Late night searches on Amazon were either fruitless or dubious. An emblem of late capitalism manifested briefly – tiny rolls of Chinese 3- or 4-ply Bath Tissue packaged with slogans such as Live a Happy Life with Good Quality Paper or The feeling of falling in love with you. The miraculous wood pulp product claimed to be Professional yet Silky Smooth, Strong yet Ultra Soft. While I hunkered down at home, it traveled from China to Finland to Florida. By the time my panic paper arrived nearly two months later, the product name had changed from Tianwei to Envision.

PANEL 2 (Summer/Fall 2020): Plague, Mullets, and Stasis on the Trojan Plains. By Summer many literary types were reading Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) and Albert Camus’s The Plague (1947), finding a timeliness in literary classics. Having lost track of time, I turned to the even slower time of Classical epic: The Iliad. The Achaean and Trojan armies have sweltered in place for ten years when the tale begins, and Apollo strikes the former with a deadly plague. The novel coronavirus surged through our population like Athena surged across the ancient battlefields, inducing Hate and Panic: Assault to freeze the blood. By day outbursts from angry men filled my daily news; by night outbursts from raging Greeks spilled from Homer’s lines as freely as blood. The sprinting Abantes and their fierce mullets put my DIY hair care to shame. Sometimes days or even weeks could pass before I returned to the book. I would pass seamlessly from my homebound stasis into the stately crawl of Homeric time.

PANEL 3 (Winter 2020/2021): I, Propane Robot, Will Invade Your Pandemic Porch. By Summer my husband and I had learned that our social life would be a socially-distanced one on the front deck. We launched our #CoronaCafe, prompted by friends who wanted to keep dining out together. By Summer’s end we’d rigged up outdoor fans and personal neckwear fans to keep our dinner parties going. We hung a string of lights when we Fell Back to Standard Time. But even Florida winters are not ideal for outdoor dining at night. Right on cue–when the tall patio heaters were out of stock–Mr. Heater materialized on Amazon. He was WALL-E perched atop a propane tank, a futuristic centaur. Mr. Heater’s glowing eyes stared unblinkingly into our own, transfixing us long after our guests had departed, after the Red Planet had risen above our cul-de-sac. Our propane robot transported us beyond this pandemic Earth, our own Perseverance landing us where we began at home.  -MB