Corona Diaries

Maeve

“There is a very strong chance I could go ‘batshit cray cray’ by the time this is all over.”

Background Information

Female, working from home part-time as a teaching assistant, Australia, Married to Mick (farmer), 2 young daughters.

Farm meets COVID 19: April 2020

I don’t really know hwo to describe my writing – it’s sort of an abstraction with images of how I am orienting myself in and around corona-affect…Or maybe how it is orienting around me? At the very end of this month’s writing, I have been ‘iso’ for 6 weeks. I have not been off my property in this time. My only connection with other people has been via video conferencing. I live in a house with my husband Mick (farmer) and my two primary school aged daughters. Mick works a full 6 days per week. I work 3 days per week from home (since COVID) restrictions) as an education officer (diversity) for an education department.

There is a very strong chance I could go “batshit cray cray” by the time this is all over.

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My feelings are well and truly attached to COVID 19 – I can’t shake it. I have had weeks to get to know this invisible enemy. My compromised lungs are afraid of this disease the emotion fear making my body do things that only weeks ago would have been as foreign as the Coronavirus itself. Disinfectant has become my new superpower- nothing escapes its spray, but hey, at least I’m not injecting it! Fidelity to strict hygiene regimes had replaced a relaxed and natural ‘farm germs are good germs’ way of being. Living close in nature I feel a strong urge to observe more deeply what surrounds me- are there clues in my own ecosphere of how my family and I can be in this time of virus? What exists in my politically defined isolation space that can help orient me to who I am -before and after this virus?

A farm can be isolating anyways, through physical distance a farm enjoys space and a pace separate from cities and towns. I have felt alone here on the farm many times. The Coronavirus, in a way has made me feel grateful to already know loneliness, to feel comfortable with loneliness as a feeling. Here on the farm there is now a sense of security that comes from being alone here with space, family and nature. There is now a strong comfort in being at a distance from the rest of the world. Insulated in fresh air, grass, trees, machinery, sheds, tools, gardens, sheep, cows, chickens and dogs. Nature and farm functions combining, assembling as a shield. I hope.

Mick is a farmer, an essential worker. With this status, I have defined Mick in virus terms as our “weakest link”, as he works in the community continuing his role in food growing and distribution. For us, this is where our economy meets family safety. He works all day- everyday, including most weekends. I know that we

are so lucky to have both our incomes. However, sometimes it is difficult to feel those lucky feelings. You know, warm and tingly, pleased- “proud as punch”, deeply satisfied, fortunate and grateful. Sometimes when Mick arrives home, I am angry with him. I resent that he is still social with real people outside our house- his life has barely changed. I, on the other hand have been in lockdown for three weeks now. I have only seen people virtually and this is, I won’t lie, messing with me. I cannot deny, however, that it is a feeling that has emerged strongly amidst COVID. I feel so privileged and fortunate and yet I also feel a sense of utter injustice. All at once.

Photo 1: Reminders of industrialisation on the farm now present to me different meanings. Once a chain to hold a gate, now a symbol to me of how some things in this life cannot be kept out or restrained. In this COVID life a gate and its chain will not restrict the invisible. Maybe a symbol of the machine, the mechanics unravelling, losing their effectiveness and purpose? The links in the chain of neo-liberalism are weakening. We can only hope.

Photo 2 below: Like rust, COVID 19 will leave its mark. Its power to discolour and stain us may add to our beauty as imperfect humans, or it may corrode and break us down to dust.

Does the answer to COVID exist before our very eyes? Are there hidden secrets in our everyday that we failed to see when life was different? Walking daily on our rural Victorian property my mind is drawn to “virus like” in the environment. I don’t know why. Maybe if I prove I really know what’s going on around me I will be protected – an environmental secret agent. Nothing will get past me- nothing will escape my attention. Am I really honing my observational skills for something invisible?

My camera has become my “go to” apparatus, enabling me to organise my life, to put things in literal perspective- my perspective, as I seek to create my own visions of this profound experience and to buffer the insidious images in the mainstream and social medias. How does one erase the images of people dying, masked, dripping and melting into makeshift beds on mass on the other side of the world? To see the images of those captured and tortured by a virus with the clear, threatening message- “this could be you”, because this virus does not discriminate. The other side of the world is Australia’s warning, Australia’s canary. In Italy, the UK and America flocks of people dying- their bodies oozing with an unwelcomed refugee where once oxygen flowed. Technology giving our island on the other side of the globe time and knowledge to hopefully save our souls. Will this knowledge be enough? Will it be timely? Will we retain the banner of being the “lucky country” through this bacterial invasion.

Sontag (1977) says, “…the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.” (77) I do not call myself a photographer, however, since the coronavirus I am documenting my life in daily pictures. I am attempting to make my world, my family permanent and unchanged via a lens. This is how I get my sense of control now. I do love my world so

much I do not want the COVID effects/affects. I want things just as they are. If I say it loud enough, if I capture enough images of nature now visible to me, will it be enough to save me? Am I passing the COVID test? Because I feel as though there is a test. I feel as though there is a message, we are meant to get loud and clear. When people say, life will never be the same, our lives will be changed forever. Is it environmental gratitude that “the gods” are wanting? Will this awakening and thankfulness for what I have, what I had previously been overlooking give me virus immunity? Does this fucking virus really need to teach us anything? I was already angry towards capitalism- I didn’t need a life/game changer to feel this. Perhaps instead this virus is teaching me more about myself. Connecting me to my own life in new ways.

My mind, my eyes, my ears are seeking balance to the panic-stricken ubiquitous news-faces of foreign COVID suffering. Natures images of home instead offer me calmness and reassurance, a sense that we humans can adapt and survive. Nature offers such different perspectives and feelings. I am desperately trying to find other aspects of a good life that are different to the ones that I have been trained to pay attention to (Berlant). Today I see the webs. The webs connecting and encircling the vine only seen if I orient myself just so. It matters how we look at things how we see things. How we see things matters how we look at things.

How is our society orientating itself to get a perspective of the virus? What has this virus enabled our society to see? What inequities has this virus illuminated? More importantly how will what is exposed be framed by our leaders? Already the Federal Education Minister is blaming remote learning for social inequalities. It seems political ideologies are thicker, more menacing and grip harder than a pandemic. Will this time in “iso” make a physically un/circulating society angry for change? Are people in their homes festering, getting ready to stand up to inequality when this is all over? Maybe we just shouldn’t wait? (not me below- Twitter).

Show this thread... show the thread of inequity as is weaves brighter, luminous even in this time of pandemic, but still evades its truth of origin and sustenance.

The Mushroom at the End of the World. On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Anna Lowerhaupt Tsing

“What do you do when youy world starts to fall apart? I go for a walk, and if I’m really lucky, I find mushrooms. Mushrooms pull me back into my sense, not just- like flowers through their riotous colours and smells but because they pop up unexpectedly, reminding me of the good fortune of just happening to be there. This I know that there are pleasures amidst the terrors of indeterminacy.” (p.1 A. Tsing, 2015).

I know that mushrooms are not for everyone- but I get Tsing. I get how a fungus can provide hope and surprise. I get how turning to nature feels like turning away from capitalism. Tsing says that mushrooms grow despite capitalism. It feels like now is our chance to look away, to move away to move towards something better. Unlike Tsing, I like to think that mushrooms/nature instead grows in spite of capitalism. A constant, earthly, fresh reminder of the something else. It’s mushroom time of year here in central Victoria. The mushrooms have arrived in bountiful supply, perhaps coincidentally with state and federal news that the virus curve continues to flatten- An earthly protest to be recognised as the machines and their mechanics get ready to resume their positions, their reward for flattening the curve. The workers are getting ready to jump into gear in response to a splattering of national messages- calling for restaurant and school openings and domestic travel to begin. Here comes #scomo, here comes capitalism stomping, squashing all the mushrooms, suppressing the aromas of earthiness and the chance of reimagined reform. Reform that could smell as fresh, crisp and clean as autumn will return once more to the smell of oil and grime.

“…life requires the interplay of many kinds of beings. Humans cannot survive by stomping on all the others.” (p. Vii A. Tsing, 2015).

And yet, that is exactly what they are doing the national economies of financial gains are being sized up against the health and wellbeing of staff and students with independent schools being offered cash earlier if they fill their schools up to 50% by the start of June. Putting the decision of parents returning to work in the hands of private schools. This is in conflict to the state-wide emergency plans - and is BRIBERY.

The workers are limbering up to lubricate the machine…

The virus is only now starting to show its true face, its versatility on how it physically alters bodies. It is a trouble without end. It continues to trouble. Like us it is becoming, evolving and we in our relation to it are doing the same. In my head, the sounds of click go the shears ruminate, oscillate in tension with our safety. The buzzing hum of the shears, ruminate, oscillate, in tension with our safety. The buzzing hum of the shears, “click go the shears boys click, click, click.”

Our home is our castle. We are spending so much time in our castle.

“What do you call this then darl?” “Bribery, darl. Everyone knows about bribery darl.” “Yeah, but it’s what you do with it.” It matters how you look at things what you see.

“This is going straight to the Pool Room. “I’m not even taking it out of the wrapper.” Humanity didn’t even make it out of the wrapper. It will sit prized in the Pool Room as a memento that humanity objectified visited once...

For context.

It turns out isolation can be the impetus for changing the rules of board games- inventing new ways and rules. “GuessWho?” played subjectively has now entered our norm (I am ashamed to say). “Does you individual look like they could do 10 push-ups?” “Do they look like a librarian?” “Do the look like they went to private school?” “Do they look Catholic?” “Do they look like they could tell lies?”

As the faces on the game board are flicked down amid the giggles of my daughters (they think they are so hilarious) COVID19 flickers through my consciousness again. In my mind quietly without a word I wonder if 􀂵Mary􀂵 would survive the virus...probably not. COVID can be morbid even before it causes death. The traces of the virus that sometimes lay asleep in my mind can awaken and propel me into a spin of irrational thoughts in a split second, making the disease feel close, intense, immense. Stealth like the virus moves like my shadow that is always with me, lurking, breathing down my neck, whispering, “Guess Who?” a translucent infection-reflection that loops and mocks at my sanity. Could these feelings, these affects be worse than the actual physical effects of COVID 19? One thing is certain for me, that a bug, a germ that is still in reality so distant can be so visceral and ever-present.

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It’s not a war!

COVID 19 is not a fucking war! This statement made by various world leaders made me angry. This is a time for us all to unite and work together. Enough of the patriarchal bullshit! Be fierce together.

“It is not by cultivating the image of warriors that governments will convince people to continue to comply with health authorities: it is by appealing to civic duty, solidarity and respect for fellow human beings” Constanza Musu, The Conversation

I’ve got that zoomin’ feeling.

In a strange way, the virus has become a vehicle for belonging. Belonging as a space, not a feeling. In a weird way it has attached us to life itself. It has become a web (internet web) of constancy a new way of living/becoming. (Berlant)

Postscript

Coronavirus, Caronavirus: By my Aunt (with permission)

Caronavirus, Caronavirus,

What have you done to us?

Created a worldwide pandemic,

Killed many, left others sick,

So bloody, bloody shocking,

Unemployment numbers rocketing,

Problems paying rent and bills,

Fear and isolation, more of your ills.

In some we’ve seen a good side

It’s the selfish ones I can’t abide.

Not thinking of others as they hoard much

Toielt paper, tinned tomatoes, rice pasta and such

Selfishly leaving shelves totally bare

Bastards! What do they care?

Ah ha me thinks. What can I do?

A jewellery business venture, yoo hoo

A use for hoarders’ excessive loo rolls maybe

But no, they must suffer, not profit, from their greed

Contact the media, get them on side

Loo paper hoarders they must deride!