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In the time of coronavirus

A collection of stories submitted by the public on their experience of living through the time of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives. Globally the scale of human suffering as a consequence of Covid-19 has been very great. Everywhere people are now reflecting on what this major and previously unimaginable global crisis means for us, as individuals, living in the 21st century. This forum offers a space for writers to reflect on their experience in Aotearoa and to consider questions such as: What might we need to remember and preserve? What has been my experience, my observations, how might my priorities have shifted, in a good way, as a result of the lockdowns? If you would like to contribute to the re-collective effort through any of the following life writing formats — journalling, nature writing, memoir, commentary, poetry, notes on work in progress during lockdown… — please make initial contact through my contact page. Next prepare a page of A4 writing, starting in the present moment and moving where you need to into the recent past and forwards from that point, with a title, brief bio, photo (optional) and your contribution will be added to the repository of important writings flowering in this space.

“Securing the memory of COVID-19 is the minimum we owe to each other in the aftermath of this catastrophe.”

Richard Horton, “Covid-19 and the Ethics of memory", The Lancet , 6 June 2020
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Don't Fence Me In by Ruth Busch

20/5/2020

1 Comment

 
Ruth is a retired Jewish lesbian lawyer/legal academic. She grew up in the Bronx, New York and came to New Zealand about forty years ago. Ruth has three children, nine grandchildren and a wonderful partner.  The wisdom she lives by is a statement made by the anarchist Emma Goldman, "If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution."
 
Where I live, in a retirement village, the residents and all visitors now have to pass through a cordon of road cones in order to drive into, or out of our street. The security guard makes notes of our goings. Name, apartment number, time, sometimes even the reason for our travels. Those of us on foot, the ones who exercise at a nearby park, we are often waived through but sometimes the uber-bureaucrats among the guards collect the same data, though clearly, especially for those of us using walkers, we won’t be covering much ground once we are allowed out, into what I now call freedom land. I myself have never been stopped from leaving but two older, more enfeebled women, have told me how they have been, their reasons apparently invalid, not good enough to pass some unknown test which has never been communicated to us.
 
I have a name badge that’s often asked for by the guards. It’s become a sort of passport required to be shown each time I want to go out or in.  Given its apparent importance, over the last few weeks, I have managed to lose the badge on repeated occasions.  Sometimes it just gets caught up in my jeans or in my bag but recently I have really lost it. I have had to backtrack, retracing my steps from home and around the park, increasingly anxious to find it. Today was the worst of all. I had walked three times around the park’s perimeter and then back towards home but when it came time to show my badge to a new guard, it was unfindable. Back I went, round and round but it was gone. I gave up hope. It was only when I enlisted Jan, my eagle-eyed partner, that it turned up, hidden among the tall grass.
 
Jan has now devised a simple solution to this ongoing hassle. She’s tied a long crimson ribbon to my badge and it can no longer just inadvertently fall out of my pockets or bag. Knowing my ingenuity at misplacing even larger objects, who knows, but at this moment, I feel that this too will become just another example of my craziness that I’ll repeat to my friends to elicit a little giggle, a way to demonstrate to them, for the millionth time, how neurotic I am.
 
On other days, this name badge experience has felt much more sinister. Since childhood I have heard a myriad of stories about what could happen to someone/anyone/me even who didn’t have the right papers to get in or out of a cordoned off village. It takes me back to when I was a kid in the Bronx, to the apartment where I grew up. We had a walk-in closet there. I knew better than to venture beyond the rack of clothing hanging in it. I was certain that there was a one-way tunnel in it that led directly to the camps where my family had been murdered. Once in there, without proper papers, there was no way out. It wasn’t a game. You couldn’t pass go. You just became a nobody, another nameless no one, lost, unremembered. In there, anyone/everyone/me even fell off the edge of the earth, gone and alone.
 
Today I realise I don’t need to go there, The closet, whatever secrets it held, is no longer in my life. There are new stories I can tell. Slowly. quietly, without even realizing I’m doing it, I begin to subvocalize the words of that 1940s hit: Don’t Fence Me In. For today, I refuse to be another Jew on the run. Instead I will be someone totally different, a cowgirl, just like my childhood heroine Dale Evans, riding the range.
 
“Oh give me land, lots of land, and the starry skies above…”
Whew! A lucky escape! Long may it last.
1 Comment
Girl on Purl Action Blog link
17/7/2023 07:05:41 am

Appreciatee you blogging this

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Deborah thanks Rangimarie Kelly and Pikau Digtal for website design and artist Karen Jarvis for her image ‘Writers at the Devonport Library,’ (2023)
Writing Memoir
Defining Memoir
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Media
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Copyright © 2023 Deborah Shepard
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Conference Paper
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Writer's Stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
    • From Being Mentored to Book Publication
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact