It’s been several weeks since I posted a Picture Tells A Story, though that doesn’t actually mean I haven’t been thinking, or even taking photos for them.
I got… stuck at the end of last month, when my PTAS was going to be a shot of the receipt from an expensive food shop, talking about the privilege inherent in being able to stock up on food in preparation for going into COVID-19 preventative isolation. I knew exactly what I wanted the photo to look like, and what I planned to write. But I ended up not going ahead with the post, since many folk I talked to at that point were of the opinion that we were being a bit ridiculous in our concerns, and the steps we were taking in preparation.
The next week I couldn’t figure out what to do or say for my weekly post, as I was still stuck on the previous idea. By the week after that, I lacked the emotional resources to charge my camera, much less take pictures or write a PTAS. I had a stack of photo editing work for paying clients that wasn’t getting done either, and I’m only now getting back on top of.
Of course, the developing situation, that on February 29th, I worried my husband and I were overreacting to, is rapidly turning out to be one of the most impactful global events of my lifetime.
One thing that is becoming fast apparent through all of this, is that I, like many of us, am not emotionally or intellectually prepared for a slow-motion disaster. That isn’t news to anyone who has followed climate change-related dialog or policy over the last decade or two. Like climate change, COVID-19, both the public health calamity and the accompanying global depression that appears inevitable, is moving at a scale unfamiliar to most people alive today.
My peers and I are used to the big-thing-happens-quickly-with-lasting-effects model of traumatic change. There was 9-11, the September 15th 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers that heralded the Great Recession, Hurricane Katrina, Super Storm Sandy, school and other mass shootings beyond counting, and so on. And looming behind all of those, the awareness that we will someday have to personally confront the impacts of climate change.
COVID-19 is an ongoing disaster that takes far more than a day or two to unfold, but without the time scale or feeling that everyday people can do much to help, that we find with climate change.
About the only thing most of us can do is stay home for an as-yet unknown amount of time. The world is holding its breath, and we know that things are going to change, probably for the worse for at least a while, but we don’t have any way of really knowing what that will look like, when it will happen, or who amongst our friends and loved ones we will lose along the way.
That uncertainty and stasis is taking its toll on many of us.
As an asthmatic diabetic with a lifelong history of upper respiratory infection, I am considered at very high risk for COVID-19. It’s been over three weeks since I’ve left the house even for a quick errand, and fortunately my husband can work from home, as well.
That brings us to today’s photo, a macro shot of the rear brake rotor of my car. As you can see, the enforced idleness of COVID-19 isolation has eaten away at the rotor surface, which is now thoroughly encrusted in rust. My mental health can relate.
Tomorrow I am going to take my little car out for a drive. Those brakes will squeal terribly from disuse at first, but I’ll warm them up and break them back in a bit before returning. Shooting and writing today’s post hopefully does a bit of the same for me.