In the Throes of the Coronavirus

 

In The Throes of Covid-19

How does it feel when the Covid gets you? “The pain was like a long, steady sunburn inside my chest; the weight was like a lead apron. It seemed more sensible to crawl from place to place rather than walk. My mind had moved a few inches to the left of its usual place, and I developed what I realized later were actual paranoid delusions.

“The first wave subsided, and I thought I had escaped, but the second hit with redoubled intensity a week later. My delusions became even more bizarre. I came to believe that someone had put a Godzilla statue outside my window on purpose to freak me out—this, it transpired, was the silhouette of two black streetlights, one superimposed on the other.

 “‘Florida and Ohio, man,’ the barista at the local café said to my husband, when he asked about the tourist trade. ‘People here at least acknowledge that it’s real. But people from Florida and Ohio don’t even seem to think it’s happening.’ Having lived in both places, I believe him.”

Patricia Lockwood in LRB, July 16, 2020

Yes. I understand. I too have lived many years of my life in those two states. And also (shudder) in the madhouse called South Carolina.

 

I love Carolina, though. I still love you, South Carolina, love all y’all crazy folks who live there. Even the tight-assed Baptists? Yeah (sigh), even the tight-assed Baptists.

[excerpted from the book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?]