Thread:

Will not lie: this Diwali has been hard. This year has been hard. And mostly because of the pandemic.

I has also made me think why it has been so difficult dealing with sorrow, frustration, rage, and more that come in waves...

1/n

As always I have gone looking for answers in books. And while there is a lot of information on pandemics, there isn’t a lot on how people coped.

The most useful is the concept of ambiguous loss http://ambiguousloss.com 

2/n

But even then it doesn’t quite begin to encompass all that we are grieving at individuals: people, income, time with loved ones, ability to travel and gather together. And these spill to related things that nourish us such as concerts, litfests, galleries, movie theatres
3/n

And online doesn’t quite replace this. This is most obvious with not being able to be with loved ones. But it is also something ineffable: that feel of being in a club or theatre or gallery or bar or concert with strangers.
4/n

I touched on this in my essay and have been thinking of the ways we form and maintain and function in kinships, communities, collectives.

Even when we don’t interact with eachother, know eachother. And despite all individualism we need this so much

https://preelit.com/2018/11/13/the-gait-of-the-elephant/

5/n

Alongside we are grieving possibilities. Yes material ones of travelling, going to university, taking up a job somewhere else. But we are also grieving ambiguous possibilities. Of making connections with eachother whether it’s a glance in a gallery or shared laugh at a show

6/n

And even here we are grieving the possibilities: That casual drunk, giggling conversation in the ladies toilet; that possible passionate erotic connection with a stranger across the bar; the kinship of loving a book at a litfest

7/n

We aren’t just missing our loved ones.

We are missing our potential loved ones and the possibilities of meeting them, learning them, loving them.

8/n

And we are missing strangers who will remain strangers and yet with whom our passing encounters are a caress we did not know we loved and now miss.

9/n

And what makes our grief much worse is not knowing how to reconcile what we know intellectually (pandemic is killing us) and our embodied, lived knowledge (unless we have experienced or witnessed someone who has been fallen ill with Covid).

10/n

And even then the first hand embodied knowledge is isolating rather than liberating. Then the suffering and grief are compounded exponentially but also further removed from the wider collective experience

11/n

I have no answers so sorry if you hoped this thread would provide some solution.

But I have been thinking of what has been hardest for me and those I love

12/n

I do know that when this is over and we can move and gather safely again, I will cherish shared spaces with those I love more.

But I will also cherish those innumerable small daily, casual encounters with innumerable strangers more and more deliberately.

13/n

Most of all, I’ll cherish our shared planet with far more strangers than friends much more carefully for all the infinite possibilities we hold together.


End thread.
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