Stillness: Notes of a native son

DON’T get me wrong – our Covid existence has been far better than many. It has been productive, even lucrative.

My wife remains gainfully employed, albeit, at the extortionate whim of the neu Covid-styled employer. Like many, she works a 14-hour day, every day, in a home office set up at your own cost for no new incentives aside from the refrain that, at least, you still have a job.

Covid brought our daughter home. The isolation forced a familial camaraderie that we thought we lost when she turned 18. Often tense, but mostly gratifying. 

It killed her 3-year relationship for which we feigned empathy, but toasted to after she went to bed.

And of course, Covid gave me my grand gesture. It forced me to sit in my studio amidst the silence of a broken world and pour my heart out as if I were a young artist again.

Otherwise, Isolation sucked.

It rammed home the reality of Separation like never before. For too long I took the construct of Home for granted. I miss my Mother. I wish my Father were still here. I cherish my Tribe, the family and friends I treated with indifference. I long for my barber and my picture framer, the mutton man, and the pork seller and yes, even the flawed Individual we send to represent us in Parliament ... because he, too, is mine. They are the sounds and smells that are instinctively MINE.

And no one can tell me otherwise.

For us of that pre-Covid generation, guilty of the obscene excesses of a greed, gluttony and adventure that seems to have brought us all to this moment, perhaps Covid is a reset, a kind of Hussein Onn moment for us to take stock, cherish community and all come home.

In fact, I had a go home moment recently. I am sure there is an element of being too sensitive by half and perhaps it is simply the emotional fallout of isolation but ...

Let me get it off my hairy chest. 

Last week I wore a mask, as we do these days unless you are an entitled jackass. 

On it was the famous George Carlin quote on never believing what the government tells you. Not my government or yours ... just the government.

After all, we know Government lies all the time. It is what they do.

However, in the so-called developed, first world they used to dress it up better. Well, Covid has stripped that bride bare.

Anyway, the response I got from a friend – erudite, cultured, worked in Asia, undoubtedly cleverer than me – was: '"You had lotsa training there in KL mate!'. Followed by a smiley face exclusion clause, which of course means you can get away with saying anything.

Caught between various hard places of being offended, defensive or timid, I wondered if this was a ‘If you don’t like it, go home’ moment. Or was it a ‘be grateful you live here’ moment? Or perhaps it was simply a boarish, insensitive ‘haha I am so funny’ jibe. 

Whatever his intent, Covid is full of teachable moments and this – relatively insignificant ‘know your place’ jibe is unsettling and frankly, offensive. 

Something gets lost in the quest for that sweet spot between assimilation and identity and place. 

My great, great grandfather did it 150 years ago when he came in-search-of. 

Covid and its Isolation made me realise that perhaps I don't want to do it again.

Go tell it to the mountain. – The Vibes, November 14, 2020