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Pruning the Beast: How a Virus Forced Us to Face the Inevitable — Nicole Sallak Anderson
In my early thirties, I threw out my bathroom scale. I could no longer tolerate the daily measuring of my weight-up a few pounds and my mood turned dry and cracked, like an old desert father’s skin, for the rest of the day. Down a few pounds and I suddenly though I was Cindy Crawford. After twenty years of measuring my worth through the size of my body, this was a game I could no longer tolerate and gone it was. As long as I fit in my favorite pants, I’m good. If I can’t button them, something needs to change.
I’ve taken the same approach with the quarantine-I don’t measure it by counting the days. Am I allowed to move about freely? No? Then I’m still in quarantine. That’s enough data for me.
On this day, the 27th of April, in the 20th year of the second millennium of the common era, I’m still not allowed to move freely and thus, am still in quarantine. As the days blur into one, I have to admit I’m equal parts incredulous, dreamy, and out of fucks. But mostly I’m amazed that the entire First World has made the choice, conscious or not, to destroy many of the systems we rely on for modern life. Sure you can Zoom, and most white collar professionals will survive this quarantine as a result, but the cracks are already forming in the foundations of our civilization. Our…
