Hello everyone, I happen to be one of the few people I know that’s still working during the pandemic, otherwise I’d be spending more time writing for this blog. Just a heads up this post does contain my thoughts on death and dying so, fair warning given.
I haven’t really posted much about the current coronavirus recently, this is for two reasons. The first being I never really wanted this blog to be about my thoughts on the latest thing. I enjoy my posts that are reflections on topics I’ve been thinking seriously about for a long period of time. This particular pandemic being a bit too ever present to ignore though. The second reason is that I don’t really know how to put my thoughts on such an unnerving topic in blog form…
I like to keep my personal images unedited for approx. three months so I can have a more objective view of the photo. If I edit too soon my personal relationship to the image still has a bit of “emotional momentum” from the experience of taking the image. But that’s not even the reason why I find it difficult to blog about covid-19. The reason is that I feel a lot of things. I’ve been reading a lot to calm my anxieties during this turbulent period. I’ve been thinking about David Foster Wallace a lot, particularly the line that goes something like “There’s two ways to raise a flag to half mast, the first is to simply lower the flag, the second is to raise the pole twice as high.” There’s a lot of things in the book Infinite Jest that are extremely prescient for today’s situation. I feel like reading his work has helped me be better conditioned for the stresses of today’s world.
Why is that? I think it’s because David Foster Wallace was such a good writer that he knew exactly how to provide enough detail so that the reader feels like they’re experiencing the situation his characters are going through. Once you’ve gone through the insane amount of psychological pain that the people in his books go through your own mind becomes a bit stronger, a bit more understanding of what the experience is like when it comes to you in the real world.
I also try to keep in the front of my mind that old saying how our greatest strength is often tied up with our greatest weakness. Namely, in this particular situation, that we die. No two ways around it. Which in an abstract way isn’t too excruciating compared to the idea that everyone we know and love is eventually going to die.
But at the same time this is precisely why life is so wonderful. If we knew we were going to live for ten thousand years there’d be no reason to appreciate what’s here right now. Like sheets flowing in the summer wind, it’s the act of movement, or rather the transience of something that makes it beautiful. To lay dormant and immortal would be boring. Life is tolerably pleasant at the best of times, and manageably terrible at the worst. At least from what I’ve experienced. Perhaps the future will contain some kind of pain that’s worse than anything I’ve ever experienced. In fact, it almost certainly will. It’s part of the price of being alive. But I’ll let that come when it comes.
All images were taken during my trip to San Francisco in 2016.
Thanks for your time,
-Jeremy.