Private: ~Rien à Faire, A Part of the Covid Memoir~
Rien à faire // Nothing to do
‘Rien à faire’
This line is the first opening line of the French play En Attendant Godot, Waiting for Godot, whose basic premise is the endless wait for a character who never arrives.
The title which is highlighted in gerund form further supports the idea of an endless and indefinite wait. In many ways, the play mirrors the current pandemic, a wait with no definite expected end in sight.
I went recently to close my classroom for the school year. When a teacher closes their room, they take down posters and learning aides on the walls, declutter surfaces, unplug units, everything to leave the room spotless for maintenance purposes over the summer. This is good, except in this case, the end of our school year came earlier than usual. My chalk board which had still not been wiped off, still had the date Friday the 13th. March, 2020.
Roughly seven weeks earlier, I was here in this classroom assuring kids that the virus wouldn’t be bad enough to send them home for the year. This was no longer March but May. There were no students and no activity in the building outside the main office where the principal and faculty were waiting on faculty to be done cleaning up their classrooms.
The recurrent idea of having to wait while having nothing to do, rien à faire, in the Play, plays out in reality having been in quarantine for a total of eight weeks. What options are there for staying home when all the stores or spaces of leisure have been closed down as well? Quarantine was like a dark, quiet pit of bad news, anxiety and suppressed sighs. A few days ago, news of residents of Michigan carrying assault style rifles to their state house to demand the end of the collective lock down shook me. I personally think that there is a secret fantasy attached to the wearing of masks for villians and superheros that we see on TV; and so to be able to turn things over their heads while maintaining some anonymity with a mask is a secret fantasy that I believe some people would love to act out in reality. The drama of the images of a dozen men in masks carrying guns just to protest lockdown was cinematic.
If anyone wanted an end to lock down, what happened to dialogues and petitions? Also, were they the only ones whose lives had come to a halt in this situation? Who were they going to shoot and what would shooting anyone do in the grand scheme of things? Do bullets deliver vaccines? The absurdness of the situation heightened what the real problem with America is for me. Today May 5, 2020, I read another story of a Family Dollar worker in the same State Michigan who got shot in the head for doing his most basic role as a worker of the store, of enforcing the mask mandate. The White House’s treatment and minimization of the pandemic is not the rot that is at the center of America’s problems. The pandemic only further garnishes the worm eaten apple that America already is.
A place where guns replace communication, cries for help and temperance. And in all of this, is it meaningful to ask where God(ot) is? In the play, the character of God (ot ) never appears, though the characters await this entity. The characters never really find a solution or resolution to whatever or whoever they await. They are given no answers, no remedies, no alternatives. They stay in their incomprehensible and meaningless states until the play ends. Returning to reality, I feel like the fact that the gravity of a pandemic has not yet succeeded in separating humans who are capable of complex thinking from turning to their guns for solutions shows that nothing ever under this sun could curb shootings in America if laws are not activated.
As an educator that has taught on all levels of American education over the past 8 years, I must admit that like many Americans, the imminent fear of getting shot is baggage I move and basically wear with me every. Single. day. The day I received training on how to handle ‘the situation’ in case an active shooter entered the school I work at was the day my paranoia toppled over the brim of the deep container that I hold it in. As a normal part of my life, I live with paranoia. Paranoia that is regretably a part of American life. I look over my shoulder in empty parking lots, I carefully avoid confronting the kids in my class who I consider emotionally unstable against my better judgement and values; — and I ensure every single night that the latch on my front door is actually in place before I go to bed. Needless to say the night George Flyod died was the night I suddenly understood the deeper significance representing what a mother is. The voice of George Flyod’s inner child called out regardless of the masculine and impermeable container that carried his soul. This is a place where after all, you can still get shot unbelievably in your own home or even on the wrong front porch.
I also often contemplate ways I could escape public spaces if ever, I was caught in a shoot out.
On a positive note though and only for the sake of blowing away the heaviness of this piece, I would conclude by saying that, rien à faire, our pandemic episode, eventually implied slower living that blessed us all with a more familiar knowlege or space to think of the steps that go into making family staples like bread.
Fin.
