“Whatchu gonna do when you get to the water?” – Burning, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s
Images of one pagers were texted to me from New York, where people were banging on pots and pans to honor healthcare workers, first responders, and essential workers. Anecdotes reigned supreme, as there was no evidence yet. Corporate discounts were being discussed, over Zoom, and ID.me was set up for what? Why did I deserve 30% off Northface hiking boots, and not the family of a dying COVID19 denier in Trauma A? Facebook groups were sharing these so-called “one pagers”. Whatever was on them, actual whatever. Desperate grasps at a plan for this pandemic spread via the recently emergent social media. Social media was holding its damn hat. The scourge, the curse of a 24-cycle was poisoning us ever since we saw live the bombs dropping in Baghdad on CNN all those years ago in 1991. This made us all think that sharing half-baked, professionally skimmed over, first impressions were important to share, important to inform. These references were shared as COVID19 one-sheets. It gave us something to hang onto. I google them now and they seemed to have dissolved into the inter-ether, Just like the golden age of blogs, they seem to have faded, without even vestigial internet anatomy remaining. I guess it is too easy to mine for disinformation from ill-information. Maybe access to the cutting-edge by both the genius and the moronic was a mistake, because misinterpretation is just as wonderful as interpretation depending on which way your head is tilted.
Try to preserve normalcy. Normal, normal, normal, people sick and people dying, but we must appease those who want the world to be as same as possible for every minute and every hour. Even as it is not possible, we end up treading the water of the worst option – half measures.
First they said, don’t wear the masks, you stupid fear monger, and I agreed with them, because I am lazy and donning and dothing was always just a formality. Do you taste the sugar? A little bit I say to myself, but out loud I say, “No, I do not,” because I have a paper list in my hand with 18 names on it, and I showed up late to work, ate breakfast for too long, and want to get back to my real life. I took an oath, just like I took the mask fitting test. There is no pressure point from the corporation, or from HR, or from anybody. It is both self-imposed, a desire to be useful from inside, and also subconscious and inevitable from osmosis of the ether of the modern world. As if I wonder, where is the pulling coming from, and realize that it is my own sinew, tight, like pressure felt in my own teeth. The kind of thought that enters the mind when it’s blank, and my eyes come to rest on a pile of garbage, and then I think, should I go to Muji and reset everything?
I can’t remember the one sheets anymore, and I can’t remember those funny times anymore. What happened to that time in memory, when we were so sure that everything would be different afterwards. Now, everything is the same, but my eyes still settle on piles of garbage. Where is the one sheet for now, the anecdotal confidence that the fix with come through observation and effort. But what comes at me now, discounts, and sponsored videos, and good enough targeted ads.
Where are the one sheets for this new time of crisis?