It usually begins as a quest, doesn’t it? We decide on an end point and then strike out into the great unknown, awash in expectation and maybe a little fear as well. Funny things happen along the way and more often than not, we encounter something completely different from what we had originally hoped to find. That’s life – we go on voyages of discovery, some that we choose to take and many that drag us along kicking and screaming. Voluntary or not, a memory will be made and for years after, a story will be told. I want to tell that story because I am going to be in it, and what a story it will be.
Except that for now anyway, any experiential journey of self-discovery, or seeking of new truths through exploration of uncharted (for us that is) territory has been put on hold because of a global pandemic that will just not go away. I am a storyteller and if I am restricted from venturing out then I am not able to experience the unfamiliar, I cannot step outside that box of familiarity to see what’s shaking on the fringes; I have no story to tell!
This is not the first pandemic to rage through the human population. The Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918 lasted for a little over two years infecting approximately 500 million globally and killing somewhere between 25 and 50 million people. Right now our current Covid numbers are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 225 million infected with 4.6 million deaths. Argue all you want about whether the numbers are inflated or how these accepted numbers were derived but the bottom line is that a shit ton of humanity has been directly affected by this current, deadly virus and what we are living through is nothing compared to what my grandparent’s generation experienced as children. The only difference is we now live in a 24/7 news cycle constantly pounding us with new stats and figures and a worldwide internet granting us access to information that isn’t always reliable, leading a great many down the path of conspiracies and coverups. Here’s a tip: stop listening to https://www.coasttocoastam.com.
Seriously, you are smarter than this.
https://time.com/5894403/how-the-1918-flu-pandemic-ended is an excellent article to read through if you are interested.
It’s okay to be frustrated. I know that I am. One of my favourite things to do is people watch and there is no better place to do that than an airport. You see everything in an airport – anxiety, anticipation, anger (sometimes a lot of anger), sadness as loved ones depart and overwhelming joy as others are reunited. It is a microcosm of what it means to be human. I haven’t been to an airport in a year now and the last time I was in one I became depressed. What I saw was uncertainty, fear, weariness. Once thriving shops were now dark, empty spaces and all around were face coverings of every sort; there were no smiles to be seen.
One day soon it will be different, one day soon I will see you and smile and you will see me and smile back and we will know then that it’s all going to be alright. Because my friend, we are going to get through Covid and we are going to be okay. Because you know what? We are okay now. You may not be able to see it but I am smiling at you because I know that you are being responsible, safeguarding your health and those around you, including me.
: https://Shinedown.lnk.to/AtlasFalls
Excellent song to rock out to, written in response to Covid!
I dream of the day when I can again walk down a street in shorts and flip flops, fumbling my words as I ask for a coffee with cream in an unfamiliar tongue, not knowing exactly what I said or what I am going to get. I want to stop off in some backwater Southern town in the middle of nowhere and eat bad ass barbeque. I want to do all that and a whole lot more. I want to experience all that this world has to offer and then tell anyone who cares to listen. There will be wonderful stories to come but they are not ready to be told, not yet. But there is a story to tell right now I have realized, a story of a post-industrial society in the throes of a global pandemic. Pretty cool eh? And what’s even cooler is that we, you and I, all of us, are the stars of the show. Let’s all be MARVELOUS!
One thought on “THE GRUMPY CHRONICLES I am searching for a story edition Sept 15”
Marty, my dear, you fail to look into your own inner life or find discoveries which the pandemic opens up to you because you have no choice.
Summers, I’m usually in Canada, fully enjoying the coolness and dryness of the Rockies instead of sweating it out and carrying a load of moist air every time I step out of an air conditioned house. Our area is a paddling wonderland — from October through April. After that, it’s a day by day decision. Definitely by June you won’t find me paddling here after the temperature gets to 84F (figure that one out in centigrade, my mind has gotten rusty from 2 summers of not having to do that) or the humidity over 85%. As you know, I live to paddle and being forbidden to paddle our favorite places in Canada, I had to find some way to survive.
That solution lay in leaving the house while still dark and hitting the water just as the day broke. I’ve never paddled that early, even when camping. Here, that’s about 6am at the earliest, not 4:30 as in Alberta! Talk about discoveries: some birds are still roosting, some of the early birds, like the proverb says, are out having breakfast. So intent on hunting, they overlook a paddler approaching them. It’s a whole different world in the early AM, until it hits 84F, which still leaves me with a whole day still to do other things. Talking about birds, am I glad I don’t have to watch my step like I do at the put-ins in Alberta where there are Canadian geese calling cards everywhere along the shoreline. Your geese prefer our golf courses; I don’t golf. And we have a natural deterrent where I paddle, alligators.
Since 200, we left for Canada before the wild grapes were ready to pick and back too late to see any except raisins on the vines, the ones the animals and birds didn’t pick off. Last year, I collected a capful of wild muscadines; it made less than 1/2 pint of grape jelly — wild grapes have their own pectin (ask Dar if you don’t know what that is), just sugar and strained grape juice and boil to right consistency. Delicious, and what an aroma! All new experiences: foraging, cooking, eating! Little did I know that there are five varieties of grapes where we paddle in various degrees of tartness. I also found out that wild persimmon (the type you have to eat fully ripe or your mouth puckers up) on branches over the water is not picked off by possums or raccoons. And since they’re heavier when ripe, it’s sometimes within a paddle reach to get the fruit which beats any store bought snack one has brought. And, I discovered mayberries which are an early blueberry — never knew that they were different since we were gone by the time both species fully ripened. This summer, with the help of Ed, we got enough to make a pint and a half of Mayberry jelly. I threw in some green berries to add pectin to the mix. And this year, for the first time I’ve seen them, along an embankment with moss covering the roots of an oak tree — chanterelles, a whole batch of them! Oh….I can’t forget the ringed paper wasps. They are remarkable social wasps — and they sting. Last summer on one paddle, going upstream, on one side I counted 38 nests along a 3.5 mile stretch. I get up pretty close to take photos to post on inaturalist.org. Once, to move a branch with leaves so I could get a clearer shot, my paddle slipped and hit the nest. My dad had taught me as a child when in a swam of angry bees, to stay still and calm and they will pass. Well, these were angry paper wasps, and two decided to sting me anyway — fortunately on my skull, how they got under my cap is a mystery. I always carry baking soda in my PFD for bee stings, so I made a poultice to apply and my head didn’t swell — not from the bee stings. It’s good to be reminded that your parents knew best — generational continuity: history to you.
Discoveries always expose skills you don’t have or force you to learn new ones. With only once a month shopping, with supermarkets being repositories of all varieties of the covid virus, I learned to make sourdough bread. And, of course, the jelly making. Next summer I’ll apply it to Saskatoons and chokecherries. I did not extend my mushroom discoveries to the point of eating — skills and confidence are two different things. So, as old as I am, acquiring new skills has got to count with memorable experiences.
Regarding the inner life? I’ve finally put the one course I took in statistics to use, to try to make sense of numbers being offered to anyone trying to make sense of the pandemic. But, as in all things which should be clearer with numbers, policy issues obscured what finally came out as “information”. And one learned to go with the flow — every week was a new set of interpretations and findings and new directives (or advisories, I guess would be a better term), the reaction from the public was the same, confusion. Anyway, that’s got to count as resilience? Or blockheadedness.
I choose resilience because there’s only Ed to contradict me and we learned early in the pandemic to bite our tongues and not utter too quick a rebuttal. When your entire social life is another person, you are much more conscious about keeping it civil.
So…there’s a lot of stories in your life to tell, particularly with covid. Start with that pond of yours, unless all the reeds have taken over. And I’m not suggesting kayaking or stand up paddle boarding, although that might be a hoot to see! And that might be worth a story to write up.
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