Try and imagine carrying a backpack with a laptop and a litre of water. And your phone and a battery charger. All essentials. Not necessarily too heavy. The weight of the contents is reasonable to bear.
Just imagine if you can, that this is not an ordinary back pack. It’s a magic one. You picked it upon in some Bazaar years ago. Possibly a dirt market off the track near Beijing. Or was it in that obscure place out of Florence ? Or was it from that odd street seller on the Mornington Peninsula ? None the less it has a strange attraction about it. It’s new and yet it’s old . Its quite novel in some disturbing way. Its somehow familiar but shiny and and modern and unknown all at the same time. It’s been hiding in the back of the wardrobe. You have no idea why you would have kept it tucked away. It has rather bizarre characteristics. The thing is you can easily put things into its numerous and coloured array of zip pockets. You simply touch the zip and it seems to magically open up a space for you. You insert more water bottles bars of chocolate or another lap top or muesli bars. They seem to disappear and they take up residence. You feel the weight but the pack pack shows no sign of their receipt. No terrible bulk or signs that anything is over stuffed.
But a difficulty emerges. You can easily swivel it from your back to your chest and back again. You can easily put more stuff in. But you can’t actually remove it from being attached to your body. The back pack also seems to morph. You look in the mirror at the end of the day and in the dusk light it seems to take on the form of a unwanted , gigantic , snail shell. None the less it’s taken up residence.
Again objects , food , books , phones, all disappear without trace. It still has its attractions despite mobility being a problem. You decide to Zoom a friend. She appears on the screen. Face to face a little weary. Less energetic and the usual humour darkened. She turns slowly in her swivel chair. A giant snail shell on her back.
She confides that her husband disappeared down the backpack two days ago. Miraculously she heard him loud and clear and was able to rescue him. Ignoring the resistance of zips and the even the strange noises the labyrinth void produced ,the usual laws of weight and space and density suspended , she extracted him . She had a terrible temptation to leave him there for a few more days. She forgot about the back pack and its snail like presence . She had one focus . Strangely she recounted, almost with a return to her old self , that the snail shell fell off temporarily. It some how crept back in the hours after the extraction. She felt somehow her old self just for a while.
I’ll leave this story temporarily and return to it another day. For our days are long . Apply this to our thinking and ruminating and conversation in this current Covid19 climate. News and social media. Access to it anytime night or day. Your personal choice to consume as much as possible. An utter smorgasbord of electronic screen and audio information. When we let ourselves think about a ruminating thought for a few minutes, we can escape relatively easily. We can probably switch back to other productive or important subjects. But if we ruminate and think of the issues for an hour. Images, narratives, intrusive worries. It takes up residence. And lets not forget those people around us who have a particular bent towards doom. Then our mind is occupied for several hours. They build and create kingdoms of anxiety in our minds. Then these thoughts begin battles for dominance. By the time we lay our head on the pillow, we will be in some disarray. And it’s likely that we will still be strapped to the backpack in bed. The anxieties and thoughts regurgitating through our sleep.
During this unprecedented time, we find ourselves tuning into the news every hour of the day. Even flirting with the latest update on COVID-19. Just one more article. Just one more live interview. A quick YouTube snack. An indulgent late night snack on our favourite News app. It will not do us any good. Allowing ourselves to disengage from the constant news feed and constant occupation with the subject is crucial. In life as in this particular time with the Covid 19 refuse to feed the fear.
