Avant-Pop Literary Magazine

Essay: A Gateway by @amaranthinepoetry

Isn't it astonishing, how the unseeable things can linger on the surfaces of the most ordinary things around, and latch itself onto you just with fear and nothing more? Like memories and emotions, these little viruses stick and stay and linger and lounge on the most knowable, ornaments or eatables. It's power is such that it has managed to confine most of all the human power into their homes, behind closed doors and stiff walls.

Never has come such a moment, when the world has felt absolutely powerless, torn to shreds and tired. What these minuscule blobs of harmful powers has done, is what mankind has failed to in the growing, past twenty years or so. It slowed down gas emissions, reduced pollution, and let the wildlife wander around just as they should. They've left the streets of few of the busiest, noisiest and crowdiest parts of the world silent, almost non-existent.

The world has come to such a stop, one may think, that it has stopped rotating on itself. Time walks, no matter what, like life, like air, like the sun and the moon. It feels like a war zone, without any damage in physicality, but so much more in the minds, in the homes where food isn't set on the table for time, where minds are losing their pace, where tiresome frustration are crawling the walls of forgotten rooms.

If anything, it seems very much like an aircraft dipping down from in between the clouds, slouching, one that has been riding for way too long, disintegrating piece by piece and aiming the earth for a massive blowout. Although it wasn't as slow, it had been years since it's preparation for crash-landing, before our very naked eyes. And we somehow played blind, perhaps mistook it for a comet, or shooting star? And most of all, it has managed to unite us so brokenly, unfitting in all aspects.

This virus has no mind of its own except it's prey. It was not born to have any moral values, or was it? Is karma the only morality this virus carries? Or perhaps it is God's curse? How about the blessing from the Devil?

But none of it really matters now, does it?

You see, for years, like a mirage, a stereotype, technology has bloomed in the face of development; but with underlying power. But how far has the power taken countries, alliances, governments? Apparently, not powerful enough to face or prevent a pandemic.

They wait to see, to let it happen, and then to experiment with their power, their experiences, their senseless races. And in the meanwhile, while the earth shatters, cracks slipping under itself people- like dust being covered under carpets, consuming the population of the world with such a surge in pace that the world is shaken; they have no other option but to build a middle ground. Then, they expect to control over 7 billion people by confining them into homes and explaining to them- pandemic, epidemic, disease!

What have we come to now?- that the act of staying away has become an act of love and care.

Still, today we hear countries crying about slipping economies, scared to lose their threshold of power over other countries. But what use has this power in today's time- when the world is shattering grain by grain, in the face of unseeable killers. Turn around and look, show me a country today where people are not trembling in fear for the future- I bet there isn't one.

A deceiving yet beautiful idea envelopes the idea of our situation- one that is stupid and perhaps blind; one may call it hopeful which surely is better than hopeless- that we're all in this together. And that's why, when a brother with the virus was asked to be quarantined- he killed his own younger brother; a mother videoconferenced her final moments with her family; the public are assaulting the policemen who are providing and promoting safety. The sad part is that nobody wants to be in this together.

Almost everyone is scared to die; or worse: to live like they're dead. And to make things worse, it becomes digging too hard as to which is worse.

If anything, let's just look at this as a brand new chance, one that has presented itself to tell us to reframe everything that we have changed. To build a world that's new, better and for the kinder.

Did one ever imagine that there would be this time, where the world will be drowned into melancholy, nostalgia and fear at the same time? Nobody feels as alone anymore- even if it is enforced. It is tiring. It is harrowing. But it is good, it is refreshing, it is a new beginning to look at and work towards.

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E/N: Thank you to Dayal Punjabi for the interview and for submitting this wonderful essay about the current world's situation. Stay safe, and check out amaranthinepoetry and his works!