STUPEFACTION!!!!

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.” –Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

(This blog is dedicated to everyone who ever mocked, opposed, shunned, ignored, or took for granted my advocacy for online education, ie EDMODO, Schoology, CommonLit, etc., for the past 10 years. F. U. Also, stay well.)

Stupefaction is my new favorite word. It vacuums up all the feels and huffs them out in a paralyzing aerosol. Stupefaction is the primary pandemic. Coronavirus is the secondary, the deadlier of the two.

Symptoms include hating everyone, feeling a compelling need to do something abstract, checking a device every 1 second because something may have happened in the 1 second you didn’t look, circulating the same not so funny memes to every single Whatsapp group you belong to, intending to make the most of your time learning the Great Courses, or visiting a virtual museum, but, instead keep checking the Covid death counter or r/coronavirus, or, if you are a deranged narcissist, hanging out with your equally idiotic drift of swine.

Stupefaction is encouraged by the mainstream media who, let’s be honest, love this shit. They love anything that brings the eyeballs. Normalcy is a curse! Who the hell knew Andrew Cuomo had a brother until recently? Wolf Blitzer, Greta Van Susteren – come on. Without a disaster of some sort, their celebrity candles would have never been relight.

Stupefaction is the reason why I have shelves stocked with every kind of bean and grain imaginable, even though I have never in my life eaten a pink bean. I have NO plans to cook anything in the pantry. If push comes to shove we will be eating them raw.

Stupefaction is the reason why America was unprepared for this. The Cassandras/Paul Reveres amongst us (hello) saw this coming in January. TBH we live in worst case senario land and we cried Wolf (Blitzer?) too many times to be taken seriously. And the “It’s the Economy, Stupid” ethos is hanging in our prefrontal cortex right next to the blue dress. America played a game of chicken with CoronaV and lost.

For now.

Stupefaction is also the reason why America will be ok. Most of us have been affected with this since 2016 (whatever your politics) and yet, despite our own lack of productive agency, the life force within us keeps moving forward. The will to survive is stronger than these twin pandemics.

In the 1300s, another pandemic spread from the east like a “many tentacled monster,” and Black Death brought, what is now, imaginable devastation. What was actually three strains, and brought to humans from fleas, who can bite the bottom of the Pope in Rome was incorrectly predicted to bring the end of the world. Guess how civilization responded in the fusty timeth bef’re technology.

1. Pilgrimages (I’m looking at you, #springbreak2020)
2. Whipping themselves to atone for humanity’s sins (Still looking at you, #springbreak2020 – and #MarchWeddings2020 – and all #espècedIdiot2020)
3. Writing great literature (see The Decameron and Danse Macabre if Chaucer isn’t your thing.)
4. Partying like it’s 1999 (see #2)

And we are here. For now. And most of us will be here tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. Creeping at our petty pace. The stock market will rebound. The trees will blossom and allergy sufferers will be terrified. School will continue. Lots of babies will be born in about 9 months. The gynecologists of the world will be super busy in the coming months for many, many reasons.

But for those of us who get the short straw, the best I can hope for is a Les Miz finale. That bit where Jean ValJean is welcomed by the entire dead cast brings me to tears so hard in its devastating perfection.

Or, as a fan of contemporary Danse Macabre, this:

If all this death talk offends you, let me offend you even more! Here’s another symptom of Stupefaction: The unbridled usage of the F-Bomb. People are f-ing dropping it all the f-ing time. Even the spokesman of gallantry himself, DJT, was caught on another hot mic before addressing the nation cuz he soiled himself with a f-ing pen.

So to all of you bloggers and readers, heed the call of Virginia Woolf, who understood both the value of the written word, and the fragility of life, but sadly surrendered to a Stupefaction of her own.

Stay well. Mentally, physically, and for fuck’s sake, stay home.