![]() Fiction, at its best, is an antidote to that impulse. Modern online life, with its flattening megaphone, encourages us to process personal chaos in terms of societal pain. ![]() Ignoring the idiosyncrasies of our daily experiences is startlingly easy. When I think about the early pandemic now, it takes effort not to conjure the memories that everyone I know shares-stockpiling beans, improvising face coverings, wiping down the light switches with bleach-and to remember, instead, how much time I spent in those months trying to soothe my dog while she barked at maskless strangers in my building. I’d just rescued a dog who cried in the night and was frightened of people she didn’t know, and my neighbor was a dealer whose clients liked to linger in the hallway without masks. I can see now that I was distracting myself from my own day-to-day. ![]() I read about past wars and crises, trying to calm myself with the knowledge that prior generations had been through worse. During the spring of 2020, I found myself thinking a lot about the fact that I was living through a historic disaster. ![]()
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