They say people don’t change. Today, in this lukewarm spring day where my life is currently taking place, I can honestly attest to that belief not being quite true. One day, just as smoothly or as loudly as they once jumped into your lifeboat, people leave. Lines disconnect, lives take different turns, or people simply…
All posts tagged Pandemic
Living Inside Ourselves
And so it was that 2020 steadily moved towards the end. The nightmares would still be there, even if the sense of being about to turn an important corner was palpable, ludicrously so. The internet is swimming in posts and articles about people’s expectations when the first year of a new decade began vs the…
On the Road
My Jack Kerouac adventure was supposed to begin today. However, life is a moving target and, every now and then, it throws a pandemic at you so you are forced — or persuaded — to change plans. The plan was a journey across America, South to Pacific Northwest with fun stops in Amarillo, Albuquerque, Fort…
Pandemic HEB
I don’t consider myself to be the kind of person who is exactly popular. I don’t like books, movies, or even activities that others love. For example, I hate camping and, although I will still give it a shot, I don’t think it’ll ever grow into it. I have far too many traumatic memories of…
Eternal Lockdown
These are troubled times, and we all know it. Whether we have been directly impacted by COVID-19 through a relative, a friend or ourselves, or we have just been otherwise indirectly impacted by government inaction or life itself, this is the hand you are dealt. Welcome to 2020, the year of a pandemic that nobody…
May Art Be Always with Us
As the worst pandemic in a century continues to ravage the soul of the globe mercilessly, imposing the natural order of things that man has long subverted — and is now called to reckon with — art once more comes to the rescue. Whether it is as literature, paintings, music, theater or film (to name…
Pandemic Slavery
It might be early days, but it very much feels like something has already gone subtly awry. The globe entered a pandemic-induced recession roughly around March 2020. The first couple of months, the news was exclusively about the virus: how it transmitted and manifested, what outcomes it presented, how lethal it was. No matter whether…
The Fear We Have
When I was a student in my first year at translation school, we read a short story by Isaac Asimov called The Fun They Had. It was a futuristic story, the type Asimov was made famous for, set in 2155. It predicted the end of the physically written word and the obliteration of the standard…
Spanish Flu Revisited
One of the most surprising things for me when COVID-19 struck was to realize that the major global health crisis that had preceded it, the poorly called Spanish Flu, over the years and decades that followed — and throughout my long existence — had gradually become a footnote in the history books. It was hard…
The Kindness of Strangers
As the world continues to navigate the first pandemic in over a century, summer is beginning to give a glimmer of hope as some countries begin to ease or thrust themselves into opening up their doors to business after over two months of moderate to full shutdowns. The art world is all but frozen, with…