cnf // on: hope
pandemic musings: part i
we’re in familiar surroundings but an entirely unfamiliar place, and perhaps it’s okay to take time charting this new, uncanny territory. it’s likely limited, made up of walls and doors and windows that you have to spend most of your time inside of, confined by, held in. it’s hard to remember that outside exists when it becomes so frugally rationed– each slice leaves us aching for more and our strict portions aren’t sufficient to satiate our appetite. our formulation of what constitutes 'normal’ left no room for any contingencies because, at our core, our 'taking things for granted’ was hope.
we only allow ourselves to be accustomed with what we do not envision being without.
we cannot bring ourselves to see this unknown as routine because we are grasping at the hope that it will never become normal.
in the deepest parts of myself, i still believe that our collective head is turned toward the light. there can be beautiful things in this uncertainty; the smallest things, reminders of the normality we yearn to return to, remembering the parts we don’t have to let go of. we can be patient, kind, right– but equally, we can allow ourselves to be present, however that may feel. it’s okay if the indefinite doesn’t quite fit right. it isn’t supposed to.
we exist in stasis: the sun has set for now and our present is spent waiting. our measurements are arbitrary and our watches have stilled. we’re hanging fire, kicking heels and twiddling thumbs. we’re searching for the hope that still lives in us: in rainbows fixed to living room windows and chalked on to pavements / in brief grins still visible as we pass, two metres apart / in bagged-up shopping left on porches.
the sun has set for now, but she has never dispirited us. she returns every single time without fail. sunset is always followed by sunrise, no matter how dark or strange the present becomes.
