Once Upon A Time There Was A Tavern – News from Aboard – [04/04/2020]

Those were the days my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way

It’s hard to believe that only a few weeks ago the world was …I suppose you’d consider it normal. It was at least the kind of crazy that we were all used to. Certainly not the best of times, but the unbalanced bizarreness that the world had come to accept as the semi-universal level of somehow-acceptable.

We went to work, went to school, took our kids to the playground. We went on lunch dates, went to the movies, pointedly ignored our ‘annoying’ neighbours. We threw weddings, wept at funerals, said hellos and goodbyes at hospital bedsides. We lived our lives from day to day, with varying levels of awareness of the people around us; sometimes so swept up in our own ‘busy’ lives that we didn’t even see anything outside our own frame of reference. Our eyes were only half open.

And then…this little bug came along. So small really, I mean physically. A virus can’t even be seen with the naked eye after all. I find myself wondering how something so microscopic could so easily wreak so much havoc on the vastness of the planet.

Thanks to this little tiny bug; there is now a ‘new’ normal. A normal where everything has changed. From schooling, to grocery shopping to how we deal with each other. I am in an odd position, in that I am both directly inside the situation – just like all of you – and I’m a step outside it; quarantined on a floating hotel with little knowledge of when I’m going to ‘rejoin’ the human race or what form that integration will take when it comes. I see the world across the water through the warped lense of the news and the internet and try to parse together what is hyperbole and what is reality. It’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference.

‘Normal’ now is staying safe within your own walls; keeping those you can close, and – for some – pushing those we love far away so that they are not within harm’s reach. Our cars collect dust in our driveways and more planes are grounded every day. We watch from behind our window glass as the world slowly becomes quiet. Schoolyards are silent, voices are muffled by masks, my father’s store – probably among many – has stopped accepting cash. From my glass and metal world atop the water I see a great many things that terrify me, that make me want to turn away and never watch again: whole countries turning in on themselves and denying aid to others, what looks like near martial law in others, individual comments calling for the death of others, and blame blame blame…some days it seems like everyone is looking for someone to blame….

But…at the same time…

I also see so much that gives me a tremendous amount of hope: theme parks donating tons of excess food. Healthy people going grocery shopping for people who can’t risk leaving their own homes. People dropping off snacks at stores just to say thank you for still being open. Online universities giving away months of courses for free. The water in the Venice canals running clear for the first time in decades. Pollution levels dropping. people clapping every night to show support for essential workers.

And art so much art, so many people driving their fear and edginess out by creating something for other people; Andrew Lloyd Webber creating a streaming channel just for Broadway musicals, international sewing groups suddenly becoming popular on facebook, families posting videos of singing together, Italians breaking into spontaneous balcony opera, Sir Patrick Stewart reading a sonnet a day, Julie Andrews starting up a children’s storybook time, friends taking requests for songs to record, artists painting art by donation. Virtual card games. People going out of their way to check if those annoying neighbours are okay.

15 ships sounding their horns together at 7:30 every night…

We are still here. We still exist. We still have heart. We still have spirit. In the midst of all this terrible coldness. We can still have warmth; we can still find joy.

We need to hang onto that. To all of it. Because this isn’t going to get any easier. Chances are, it’s going to get a lot harder before the light pierces through and it starts getting better. We need to take a good long hard look at what we thought of as “normal”, because the truth is – as many have said – that ‘’normal’ wasn’t working. We are creating beauty out of the ashes of normal. When all this is over – and it will be…one day – we can’t just crush that beauty, that new mentality of caring for each other, of watching out for each other even when sometimes the people who are supposed to be in charge don’t. We can’t just toss that away like turning the lights back on after a blackout. We need to use this ‘new normal’ to build an even better one…because otherwise, all of this horror will have taught us nothing, and that would be the true tragedy in all of this.

That would be the greatest loss of all.

And as for me, out here in my glass and steel world, know that I am thinking of you. All of you. I don’t know yet when I will return to you all, but I feel sometimes that I carry the whole world in my heart these days, and I wish I had enough hugs, enough medicine, enough masks, enough everything to magically ship to each and every person. But I don’t. No one does, not right now. So I give you this:

Handle what you can, leave what you must. If it feels like too much, take a breath, take a step back. Cry if you have to. Crying is acceptable. Crying is fine. Screaming is fine too, if that’s what you need. Cut everyone around you the same slack that you probably need yourself. Remember that we are all in this together. All of us. All however-many-billion-of-us. In this, we are all equal.

And, like I keep saying, when all else fails – “babies, you’ve got to be kind.”