Covid-19; The By-Product, Brain Mush

My eldest son and his author/event planner girlfriend live in London. They are on a three week lock down and are learning how to exercise by taking laps in the adorable yet small flat in which they co-exist. She texts me the other day saying she thought the time confined to the house would be conducive to writing, but she feared her brain had turned to mush.

Brain Mush, the bi-product of this tiny, insane microbe has exponentially exploded most of my Corpus Callosum, the part of the brain that connects the two lobes, the thicker in diameter the more highly a person tests for creativity and efficiently synchronizes its activities. My Corpus is depleted to razor thin proportions, along with my sense of humor, ability to get dressed during the day (though I insist on a shower before noon,  then back in fresh pj’s) and I find it most difficult to weave coherent sentences, on paper or in a phone call.

The fight-flight mechanism is highly honed and yet there is nowhere to fly, except into the plate-glass window, like a bird whose escape is thwarted. Though I have had dark days in the past, this isn’t the same depression. It’s not really depression, yet...it is brain mush. Sophie, you coined it, Brain Mush, or BM, or maybe not, given the recent run on toilet paper. We will stick to Brain Mush.

There has been too much to process and we are overdue for a reset, yet faced with the same four walls for the next three weeks and what we used to yearn for in our towered offices, home, has become a prison. It’s just for a time, this will pass, and things will change. Will it ever be the same, not really. Even if there is a modicum of normalization. Will we have changed? The collective WE is vital for all to accept, more than it ever, because WE are all in this together and yet I fear WE will continue to look at each other with a social distancing, even when and if there is no need.

Americans are friendly by nature and spotted in a European setting by their outward display of sheer happiness.  You can always tell an American in Paris because they smile at everyone. The Europeans put their head down, walk with a purpose and utter under their breath, with some amount of dismay and suspicion, after an American encounter. I am not sure why this happens, yet I worry that the innate nature of Americans will take a while to get back on its feet, and once there, will some folks look at people or more frighteningly, groups or races as agent-carriers; eyed with suspicion and salted with fear.

In the 80s and 90s, HIV swept across the US and 35 million died. Empathy abounded for those deaths during that pandemic; many celebrities succumbed, and it horrified the world. There was a social distancing, different from today, yet the distance was there. The HIV epidemic was endemic, creating a distance. The homophobic horrible called it the ‘gay plague’ and those who seek to tear apart the world today, call Covid-19 the Chinese Virus. This epidemic is different, it does not spare Princes or paupers.

The silver lining. Blue skies in Beijing and the canals of Venice run clear. WE, the collective, need to look to the men and women in climate and economic think tanks, folks much smarter than I am and spanning the globe,  for leadership . Will WE go back to the wanton ways of way too many carbon emissions, too many cars in Los Angeles, too much and too many? Where are the great minds when we need them? I hope they are sitting in their four walls, wondering the same thing.

This should be a terrific time to reflect, grow, and find our inner whom ever, yet for me I am still attempting to rifle through my Brain Mush.  I am with you, Sophie, mush on.

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