Before the cock crows / 849 days

7/4/20

I’m home (of course). Loved ones asleep. Remorse creeps in. And doubt. I’m not a dog with a bone, I’m a mouse with a cat. Or a Peter with a Christ in a garden. What can I deny before the cock crows?

So now, I’m clucking in the chicken coop. I know where I belong, of course, but the uncertainty seems to matter so much. How can it be that everything before shows no cause for this moment, but right now, on the evening of Sunday 5 April 2020, I’m there—I know I shouldn’t be there. I know that ten years on the wing can’t be undermined by two weeks in the coop. Nearby, and not so near, the ones I hold dear, are they giving in to misgivings?

If there is doubt it isn’t theirs, it’s mine—and it isn’t real. It’s a figment of my fragmented certainty, a moment of my squandered conviction. But every moment that I’m mindful, every insolent instant of this isolation, makes me struggle with the certainty that honour should fulfil.

So now I’ll sleep. And mostly I’ll be reintegrated tomorrow—a version of the thing that now espouses doubt that tomorrow will allow the certitude of surety. But maybe not. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll awake into the state that is now filling me with dread, that headweak moment of bleak exponentiation that this nation’s pride notwithstanding, we should stop grandstanding, and just wither on the vine, our sad decline inextricably bound to a tiny virus that sized us up, and found us wanting.

But I’m wrong, we are so much stronger than this, and though my weakness shows my defeatist attitude, governments and cabinets, nurses and inhabitants who might otherwise follow me into maudlin apathy carry me to higher ground. And like Stevie I Wonder if sound principle is invincible? If we don’t squabble about the model, and just respond to the worst case scenario, then the downside will be manageable. Most likely we win if we don’t give in, and if we don’t say that our nightmare is a frightening thing that we had no control in, and then perhaps one day we’ll understand that we are not in command of the swans that swam in that we didn’t see coming (despite our lack of warning, the swans in the swan attack, they’re not black, but they bite with the might of hindsight).

If we learn just one lesson, let’s start by progressing our understanding of this principle: it seems so simple, we make decisions, and we judge the resolution by our imprecision. But that’s a poor guide, because the sense in what we decide might not reside in the resulting events. It makes more sense to clarify, statistically. There’s a distribution that is the most important contribution to decision making. Something happened, but that’s not useful. Sum over what is crucial, and that density is the answer.

It’s not what happened that matters if we are as wise as we pretend to be. It’s the sum of all contenders, and their interactors, that define probability. If it happened, but was unlikely, we don’t harp on what could be. But if it didn’t, we should absolutely, categorically, still inhabit it. Because it could be, we must behave as if it would be, or our would be society will miscarry. It’s basic. In case it’s asymmetric we need to defeat it. We need to persist to beat it, whatever the consequence, whatever sentence we serve, however it tests our nerve. If we swerve in our commitment we deserve our punishment. And if we succeed? Well that would be glorious, indeed.

4/8/22

And now two years on it’s gone on too long. It seems it won’t stop till I drop, and it might be the cause of my dropping. Despite the dear departed, we’ve restarted, but it’s a bit half-hearted.

We now know that the Wuhan Seafood Wholesale Market is where it started, but since it mutates and creates various new variants, our position remains precarious.

I’m thinking these thoughts when I ought to not be torpid but my jet-lagged daughter is pulling an all-nighter so I’m being a writer while her Pokémon delights her. That should be good, and usual, but I’m perusing my past and the doubt from before is returning once more.

When we caught the contagion others felt awful, but I felt fine, until my decline. Apathy I feigned, but fear still remained. I tried to stare blankly while stating, ‘Frankly, no damn do I give’, but I wanted to live. My blood clotted and my lung rotted but good doctors and nurses doctored and nursed me and I recovered completely.

We did not succeed. But we did not completely fail. We nailed our feet, in a bid to defeat it. By staying stationary we saved so many. But it cannot be denied that so many died. The virus still bleeds us, we don’t know where it leads us. Although we deplore it, we somehow ignore it, the intervention was token, the symmetry stayed broken.

The need still exists.
But at least I was fixed.

The bell didn’t chime.
Until the next time.

Header image: Artifact, 2010, Gregory Barsamian