Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California
I’ve heard that snails love eating agapanthus, but I very rarely seem them on our plants. If they were going to do any real damage to this one, they’d have to move a little faster. This fellow has been in virtually the same spot for the past three days and I don’t see any chew holes yet. But I know he can move when he needs to - now that the sun is out and the wind has stopped, I’m guessing that when I go out to the garden today, I’ll find he has skedaddled off to wherever it is that snails hide out.
The time continua for the crises we’re experiencing are all mixed up. The sentiment on the street feels urgent, the demand for action now. After centuries of oppression, it is hardly appropriate to say ‘slow down’. Yet once the immediate anger is spent, we must allow at least enough time for alternatives and strategies to be considered - freedom and equality must be revised, fortified, and rebuilt into laws, institutions and minds. There has to be a balance - enough in-your-face pressure to make things change, enough time and space to get the changes sustainable and right.
Meanwhile, it’s hard to convince all of us, so used to controlling how and where we interact with the world, that time and patience are required to vanquish the disease that threatens to upend our way of life, perhaps to kill us. The more we are tempted to take shortcuts, the experts tell us, the farther back we push the day when we will truly be free to resume our previous lives or create some new rendition. Yet there are myriad reasons to get out - some urgent, others self-indulgent. Without a timetable to help us navigate, is it any wonder that we’re confused, disoriented, dazed and fearful? Our definition of time has been upended with little guidance on how to plan ahead. Today the New York Times published a survey of epidemiologists, where they asked them to weigh in on when they, personally, would feel comfortable doing certain everyday things. https://www.nytimes.com/…/when-epidemiologists-will-do-ever…
I found it helpful, though not particularly encouraging. The answer, of course, lies somewhere in the middle of a mostly ambiguous time continuum for the foreseeable future - going out when the need is greater than the risk (adopting safe behavior when we’re out there) and adapting our lives to shelter in as much as possible for the safety of ourselves and the folks we love; creating a undeniable momentum for social justice while giving democracy some space to fix itself. Can we both hurry up and wait successfully? Only time will tell.
