You couldn’t choose more equivalent weather for this low and unexpected coronavirus mood than for it to be gray and pouring across Southern California. I am worried and sad, and my writing reflects that I am worried and sad about being worried and sad
My hand starts to hurt from moving my hand across the page. I’m spilling out vague and unconnected images and metaphors that relate to how I’m feeling only for an instant and in my own mind (“Caves in New Mexico. Shadows and yellow brown dust, an expanse.”) And my mind meanders to the idea that if I got a bionic thumb and wrist, I could write forever without pain. Like the fake fingers Luke Skywalker pricks in the medical frigate at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.
That final scene with Luke and Leia has always felt like a cheap way to make audiences not just feel sad at the end of a sad movie. Our heroes are on the run, dismembered or baked inside a metal encasement, yet we close with shared smiles, promises of better times, and a swollen orchestral flourish. Eight year old me was suspicious of these sensory stimuli, and defensive of my sadness, which I felt reflected the reality of the whole situation.
But now, as I set here, listening to Max Graham’s moon beats, looking out at a thick mist covering the mountains behind Goleta, allowing all the news and fear to blow through my head: I think of this scene, and its two friends (or siblings, lol), probably thankful to both be alive and with each other, thankful for the Star Wars galaxy’s prosthetic science, thankful to be doing something to improve their situation, thankful for a stunning view of the entire galaxy, core and swirls and all. A view that might be as stunning and reanimating as when you meditate, and you see your whole mind, the thing you’re normally inside of, like the object it is. And it makes me feel respect for that scene, as more than a crowd pleasing salve for the feelings of anxious tweens who always need the good guys to win.
The good guys don’t always win. The good guys might be losing right now. And maybe I’m just having a good morning, but beauty can have meaning anyway.