Lockdown
COVID-19 seemed to hit New York City overnight. It turned out the virus had been there since December, but people's lives and lifestyles didn't come to a screeching halt until the third week of March. Within a matter of days stores closed across the city, companies laid off employees indefinitely, and those remaining suddenly had to work from home. The intense fear and confusion that followed coupled with an overwhelming lack of leadership to transform the city into a bizarre alternate reality where everyone was suspicious and no one knew exactly what to do about it.
Accompanying the empty streets and boarded-up storefronts were a handful of New Yorkers wandering the city like recently deceased ghosts. Some traveled to work, others walked their dogs, and some paced anxiously down once-crowded blocks. Regardless of where we all stood in our day-to-day lives, those of us who braved the outdoors had one thing in common: we were all trying to make sense of this strange new world.
The ancient Greeks used the word acedia to describe a listlessness towards life borne out of confinement. As the months have worn on and the virus has spread across the entire country; as police shootings, protests, and riots have overtaken our vision field; and as the road to the presidential election continues to evoke the worst parts of humanity it's hard not to feel acedia.
COVID-19 may have hit New York overnight, but its effects have spiraled much farther out than anyone could have imagined so many months ago. All of us alive right now, we're ghosts, and when this is all over - one or two or five years down the line - there's no telling how far we'll have wandered in its wake.
Accompanying the empty streets and boarded-up storefronts were a handful of New Yorkers wandering the city like recently deceased ghosts. Some traveled to work, others walked their dogs, and some paced anxiously down once-crowded blocks. Regardless of where we all stood in our day-to-day lives, those of us who braved the outdoors had one thing in common: we were all trying to make sense of this strange new world.
The ancient Greeks used the word acedia to describe a listlessness towards life borne out of confinement. As the months have worn on and the virus has spread across the entire country; as police shootings, protests, and riots have overtaken our vision field; and as the road to the presidential election continues to evoke the worst parts of humanity it's hard not to feel acedia.
COVID-19 may have hit New York overnight, but its effects have spiraled much farther out than anyone could have imagined so many months ago. All of us alive right now, we're ghosts, and when this is all over - one or two or five years down the line - there's no telling how far we'll have wandered in its wake.