By Harry Hantel

Editor’s Note: Assignment is publishing various viewpoints, journal entries, and experiential writing from across the country during the ongoing corona virus pandemic. Submit your own writing by sending it to aaron.calvin@snhu.edu.

What’s frightening about covid (I prefer that name to Corona for some reason) is how cloaked in mystery it is here in the U.S. I have a kind of sinking feeling of dread any time I open Instagram and see old classmates and friends out and about, business as usual. When asked, there are easy replies: They haven’t heard anything official, that it’s all speculative, etc.

Which is true! But just the government failing to communicate the potential severity and danger of the virus doesn’t mean that the information isn’t available piecemeal. It is. I’ve read more about the Italian and Chinese healthcare systems than I ever thought I would.

In Los Angeles, I feel separated. Most of my social circle is back in New York where I went to college. This experience feels like a film to me right now, as calamitous times tend to. Anxious scenes from America’s cultural centers play before me, apart from me. Think Escape from L.A. or Planet of the Apes. Landmarks and monuments always just looming at the edge of the frame to give the coming danger a sense of place.

Some thoughts I’ve had recently:

Sports are important. We were sipping wine and listening to music when they cancelled the NBA season and the mood started to shift quickly after that.
Not all social media is the same. At some point we can all be honest that we aren’t using any of these platforms to keep up with actual news. Among the people I follow, Instagram seems to be for young people in denial. Facebook for old people in denial. And Twitter is for those of us who always had a hidden desire to be in an H,P. Lovecraft story.
Being a writer isn’t very fun right now. There’s a kind of irony to the idea of a quarantine for writers. “Hey, you’re always complaining about not having time to yourself!” Here I am cooped up in my house, but I haven’t really been able to get much down. Reading is fine, it’s a pleasant distraction. Somehow my own writing just isn’t clicking. Maybe all of my powers of imagination are being used for my brain to run plausible and implausible scenarios for how the next few weeks will go.
For whatever it’s worth, small acts of solidarity and kindness have lifted me up. Some of them are monetary, like giving to the L.A. Food Bank. But more often I’ve just been reaching out to friends, telling them “I’m here.” It’s a promise so nebulous that I’m not even sure what it is I’m promising, but it feels important to say.
Then again, for the people who aren’t freaked yet, maybe I’m just harshing their vibe. I firmly believe that my generation takes many forms of community very seriously. Despite the siloing of our lives by way of the internet, we do feel connected. I worry for my friends and their parents and grandparents.
I don’t feel very much that the government is watching over me or worried for my health. Maybe it’s a lesson we already knew, but I believe it’s up to us to do that worrying.

I get texts and emails from my Mountainview MFA friends across the country. Sometimes just wondering how I am. For now, I say I’m okay. I hope you are too.