4 minute read
A Long Pause
On 2021 not really starting just yet.
One year on from the global lockdowns and curfews that came into effect after the COVID-19 pandemic raged out of control, 2021 continues to feel strange: it is a new year, yes, but the plagues and ghosts of the previous year are still around. Nightly curfews continue to restrict movement – dinner reservations, nights out with friends, and early morning jogs are tricky undertakings; event sizes remain curtailed – weddings and funerals are smaller and exclusionary; concerts and sports games have vanished off social calendars; travel remains uncertain – lodges and hotels are empty; and employment opportunities remain scarce and tenuous wherever they exists – the fear and uncertainty 2020 bred has become a new constant.
In and around this complex state of world affairs is the feeling that time has not really moved. Sure, it is 2021, but is it? It is quite easy to see that the days, weeks, and months have peeled themselves off the calendar and the seasons have changed – but without any change in the daily rhythms of life, without meaningful human contact and adventurous movement, it could as well be March 2020 at the start of the long pause in the season of worry. Then November. Then December. And then, and then, and then.
What remained unchanged was the shrinking of life, the husking out of human routines. Everything felt smaller, slower, drearier – dull.
What is a town without crowded parks, streets, restaurants, or bars? Is a city still a city without clubs, parties, and music festivals? What is a family without boisterous gatherings filled with distant aunts, uncles, and cousins from near and faraway places? What is life without community and the continued creation and experience of culture? These questions remain unanswered. Or maybe the responses are well-known, perhaps the fear lies in exposing their inevitable truths.
Contact and community – they were snatched from us at the beginning of 2020. Without their long overdue return it feels as though we are still in those early days of lockdown, with little else to look forward to besides endless days of television streaming, carefully scheduled grocery shopping trips, and nostalgic remembrances of days past.
I am thinking about how easy it was to meet friends for dinner, how eagerly games nights were arranged, how recklessly they devolved into competitive chaos, and how late they went on. I recall the feeling of going to a cinema when a blockbuster was premiering – the long popcorn queues seem like things from another time and place, another world completely. Remember the electric atmosphere of a dance party, with loud music and close contact? How alien does that seem nowadays? Are university students even able to have wild years or times in this new world? I wonder when it will be safe to take public transport again, or when my hands will not smell like sanitiser. I miss not having my glasses fogged up by the collection of masks I own. Handshakes? What are those? Hugs? No thank you.
It is strange, then, to realise how much the experience and enjoyment of time centred around contact and the possibility of encounter. Days were different when you could define who you had met or seen, and who you had not. The weekswere differentiated from each other based on the things one could do, or the things they could not. January and June used to be not the same because of the change in one’s social calendar – summer and winter activities helped to portion off chunks of time. And it was possible, back then, to map out a year and accurately describe what one had done, track achievements and progress, trace one’s movement between various social communities, and plan for new projects and adventures.
Sadly, though, the times have changed. Or have they?
The distinct absence of community is bemoaned. But also anticipated. Because, surely, those times, or better ones, will come around again somehow. And, hopefully, soon.
This state of limbo cannot be all there is to living, right? Surely, even long pauses must come to a stop. The hope, then, is to hold on long enough to be around for the anticipated press the play button, when everything will snap back into energetic motion. That day cannot come quickly enough. Nor can the resumption of all the activities which will help to mark the passage of meaningful time.
Rémy is a Rwandan-born Namibian writer and photographer. He is the founder, chairperson, and artministrator of Doek, an independent arts organisation in Namibia supporting the literary arts. He is also the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Doek! Literary Magazine, Namibia’s first and only literary magazine. His debut novel “The Eternal Audience Of One” is forthcoming from Scout Press (S&S).
