Trapped?

The little office is now a place to work, alone, in a college building among college buildings where janitors shuffle around emptying garbage cans, polishing door handles, keeping things as clean as they can. 

I go to this little office mainly to use the wifi. We all have to Zoom these days, teach "remotely" as they say, and it gets me out of the house. Six miles of distance between home, where people also have to use the (low speed)  wifi, and high speed internet with no one around. 

The clothes I wear are old. Now that shopping is out of the question, I "shop" inside my own closet. The pop of fuchsia announces spring, and the grey sweater reminds me that I must be careful to dress warmly in these Northern New England regions where snow remains in the forecast until early May.

Why is shopping out of the question? Why did I write that? Because this is a moment when we are being forced to face who we are with what we are not able or allowed to do. We are not able to go shopping, which makes me face the importance of that "ritual" (it is a modern day ritual in so far as we live in consumer driven culture, God is inside the store, or maybe just a simple spirit). Since I cannot go into the stores, look at the colors, feel the fabrics, stand in front of a mirror with a dress in front of me, then I will go shopping inside my own closet, stand in front of my own mirror, and try to find the little spirit at home. 

We are learning, at last, come on people, didn't you read Barthes, Bourdieu, Baudrillard, or, simply, Karl Marx, that we are a fragile society that depends on the emptiness of investments, meaning the reassurance that the future will always be better -- not even as good as but better  -- than the present. We have been living on a bet. We are currently, suddenly, losing the bet. We must face what we have, and, sadly, for so many, what they don't have, which is now a job, a paycheck, a way to buy food. (For the moment, I am one of the lucky ones, I am not facing that harsh reality). 

Meanwhile, back in the little office, wires are all over the place. We live in a wired world, now more than ever. Maybe I should face the clutter rather than stare out the window. Maybe I am trying to stay happy rather than face the mess.