la vie ordinaire

It has been around a year. A year of unprecedented times. Are they precedented yet then? We were supposed to get used to it but somehow it feels as if all of this is getting harder. As if everything is stuck. Except in this case, it is not in Punxsutawney. We are stuck in time, in screens, in platforms, in the eternal unprecedented. Is that how we should call it – the (eternal) unprecedented day? ‘I got you babe’ by Sonny and Cher might not be playing every time I wake up but MENTALLY IT IS.

The time has ceased. No more is it linear. Although it might have never been. There are certain characteristics of circularity manifesting through the repeating (and increasingly dismal) lockdowns forming an endless loop. Wow that sounds almost poetic. Look at me appearing all deep and profound. But time is not entirely circular either. Circularity implies movement or flow. There barely is any. A few short hours from break till dawn and it all plunges into darkness. Not complete darkness though, that would be calming, in a way. Darkness lit with the blue light of the irreplaceable partners of our lives these days - screens. Life has migrated into them. Now it consists of a plethora of webinars, calls, texts, emails and whatnots. There is so much of this digital noise that all it does is makes one want to escape it. No? Just me?

First lockdown involved everyone playing among us, having zoom parties, baking banana bread, doing youtube workouts, adopting new hobbies and looking forward to spring and summer. Now we are here for the third time. Evening after evening, market by fear, boredom and loneliness – spending the 'best days' of our youth. Most of the last sentence is the description of ‘The Evenings’ by Gerard Reve. I might not particularly like its main character Frits van Egters, but boy am I slowly turning into him. Frits lives in the context of the World War II, us – in the pandemic. The novel might be a bit soporific, but that's just because it aims to portray a life or a situation which is soporific. And, dare I say, so is our current setting - a little pointless, unexciting, dull and a tiny bit dreary. 

Phil Connors (I'm refering to Groundhog Day yet again) eventually escapes his eternal day. Maybe we will too. Unfortunately, till then most of us can’t occupy ourselves by learning to play the piano or carving ice sculptures, quarantine is no longer a holiday. Now what is left is waiting, wintering, trying to pass evening after evening. ‘I got you babe’ by Sonny and Cher is still playing every morning.