![]() In a recent op-ed, poet Tess Taylor argued that the Covid-19 pandemic has radically altered our understanding of time, that level we use to balance the distance between the triage of right now and the entrenched sweep of history (with all its wars and plagues). The “blue sky” out of which catastrophe falls is one that always seems bluer, more intense, and one that we might feel that we need new eyes to see and understand for what it really is. What leaps out is the acknowledgment that whenever plague (in Camus’ novel, a metaphor for fascism, tragically literal in our own moment) strikes, it always produces a feeling of sudden awareness that we aren’t ready to face the danger. ![]() What stands out to me about this passage is not its apt assessment that many human beings are in denial about the perils of existence. There have been as many plagues as wars in history yet, always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.” ![]() ![]() In his 1948 novel “The Plague” – sales of which have ticked upward during the Covid-19 crisis - French author Albert Camus reflects on the nature of outbreak and its relation to the human capacity for surprise: “Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. ![]()
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