Pandemic

I've been hearing a lot more sirens lately. I don't know if that's normal or not. What is normal anyway? Normal is going to school. Normal is being able to read a textbook, not a downloaded version of one. Normal is not feeling like every day is this never-ending repetition of the last, on and on and on. This certainly isn't normal. I'm starting to feel a bit like Prometheus and that stupid eagle.

 I was at the park last week, and saw a few people go into a house on my street, then a few more, then a few more. At last, I saw a middle aged couple step out of their car with a Costco-brand salad and a case of Corona beer. That's when I realized the gravity of the situation, that these people were attending a party, and that they were deliberately making fun of this pandemic. Not only were they being ignorantly facetious, but they were putting other people at risk. I think that's what has been scaring me this whole time: people's blatant ignorance for safety, for what's morally right. They're a herd of sheep their whole lives until someone says that they should listen to the herd, then they want to defy. And really, I believe in civil disobedience and the right to protest. It's healthy and important and most beneficial changes in the world wouldn't have happened without it. What I'm referring to is yelling to the void without checking facts, just spewing lies. Ignorance is about as easily spread as this pandemic, so it's important to guard yourself with logic and a healthy amount of skepticism. If a guy in a silly red hat is telling you to drink dangerous chemicals to preserve your physical well-being, should you listen to him?

My intention isn't to hurt people or start a fight. I guess I'm just yelling into the void, but I hope I've done my research.

What I Miss Most

It's funny how many things we take for granted each day. subconsciously, of course, but taken for granted all the same. There are many people in my life who annoy me; their mere presence is a hazard to my sanity. But, they're still in my life, and I still miss those daily trials for my wits.
  I've always lived in densely populated areas in Vancouver, and I've never known anything different than to look out my window to see busses and cars and people going by on their individual journeys. With these rules to fight the pandemic in place, it's eerie to abandoned streets drained of life. Sure, I miss grocery stores and beaches as much as the next person, but things feel a bit deeper than that. 
 The reason I love the bustle of cities so dearly is that each person in a city is so vastly individual from the next in such a beautiful and complex way. We're all trying to make our way through the world unscathed in our own ways, our own journeys, our own means and terms. Each of us is handed a different set of circumstances to endure in a unique way. I love the fact that I be to be a part of someone's story, even for a brief second. The old lady sitting across from me on the bus is on her own path that I can't follow. The man and his daughter walking past me on their way to school are on their own journeys. I'm a part of that for just a second at a time. We all collide for mere moments every day, each different and vastly beautiful and heart breaking and lonesome day of our lives. Imagine what could be changed with a quick hello or a wave and a smile? The world is lonesome and cold and terrifying, truly, but there is something so morbidly stunning about all of it. 
 Oscar Wilde once said that "it takes courage to see the world in all its tainted glory and still to love it". I suppose I just miss feeling like a real person, because I can't witness other people living.  

With the current pandemic rampaging across the globe, it's a good time to pick up a hobby to occupy yourself with. My only problem is that I don't really have a hobby. My brother has his Lego sets and intricately constructed dioramas of space battles (no judgement here), my sister is leaning both Japanese and the art of baking. My mother has taken up painting and my father is practising his guitar. Myself, on the other hand, has no ways of killing time. The research I conduct on the lives of famous authors merely wounds time, and the photography I practice dents but a scratch. No killing.

 It's not that I don't have the required materials to start a hobby, but talent is certainly a large factor. I injure both myself and my dignity attempting to bake with my sister, and I lack the patience necessary to construct meticulously-built spaceships.(And I ask too many questions about the significance of each detail, as my brother would say). My painting skills are less than subpar, and I'm hopeless at the guitar. All things considering, it seems that homework is my hobby. How tragic is that? To have school be a past time? 

 Some of the books that I've been studying are fascinating, however. I've taken up reading on ancient civilizations and wondering how their innovations have impacted our modern world in terms of science, literature, and culture. Mummified, skeletal remains unearthed from hundreds of thousands of years ago unearth many questions, but many truths about our origins. Intellectual works by Sappho, Homer, and Plato have survived thousand son years, and their fragmented words are studied today. What will life be like a thousand years from now? Will people look back on us, our books and language and art, and laugh? Will they be disgusted at the wars we've started and the lives we've taken and the wealth we've hoarded? Or, will they admire our resilience, our strength to endure our circumstances we were thrown into, and the way we came together as a global effort to overcome our struggles? Will they admire our creativity and our natural gravitation towards the arts: baking and Lego and painting and guitar? 

Maybe I should just take up knitting or something.