The Mask and the Crown of Life: a Brief Amusement

A funny thing happened on the way to the grave, and I couldn't keep a straight face, despite my destination. Of course no one really believes in the destination, and maybe that's the funniest thing of all.

Life is all play and we're all tricksters. We put on masks, try roles, tricking ourselves as well as each other -- Prosperos all, but not wanting to abjure our rough magic. We put on a mask, for instance, as magical protection against the "corona" (crown) of the pandemic virus that stalks us today. It's an act of faith, but certainly not faith in the government bodies and experts who told us to wear the mask, after telling us for months it would do no good. Oh well -- it can't hurt, we decide.

Funny things keep happening, in life, over the lifespan:
You spend the first half building your brain and the second half de-menting it (with substances, grief, wear-and-tear). But often old-age de-mentation is but a time of deeper wisdom (of "the best of brains, the worst of bodies").

When young we used to say we wanted to find ourselves, but today's young seem obsessed with finding shared identity, not self -- a programmed thing, not an individual thing. Bullying is often part of sports, and "anti-bullying" was briefly a movement. Now bullying's part of the rules of the game of censoring and de-platforming the wrong rights-movements. (Never trust a movement.)

Agatha Christie played a disappearing game at one point. Hide and seek. She left home and everyone ran around looking for her and coming up with theories about her fate -- and then she was back. Many people want to do an Agatha-disappearance, or at least to play-act one through dis-guise. Some people seem to have quite taken to hiding behind COVID masks, making a flag for the face covered with playful symbols. Shapes, colours, diagrams all mean something. At first we all felt awkward wearing a pandemic mask, but now we're beginning to feel naked without it.

That's one of the funny things: you disappear behind a mask, or you disappear into thin air like Agatha did, but then you resurrect. You are re-born. If you were born in the first place, that is. Some apparently weren't. If you were born in a place where earlier tribes lived before you, they say you weren't born in your natal place, but "settled" there. Where you came from is not explained, but you can only be native to the place where you were born. Maybe some of us are laughing on our way to grave because we won't be dying there, never having been born. We laugh at this thought, funny-humorous and also funny-strange.

We wear the crown of immortality then, and the double laughing/ weeping masks of theatre as we follow the muses through our comedy-drama -- never born, yet having the time of our life.

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Health Officer Recommends --To escape Covid-19 AVOID DIGITAL DEVICES

Ha! Scared you, didn't I? Although the virus does indeed land on surfaces like keyboards and smartphones, they aren't telling us to "stay away from crowded websites" yet, or "maintain distance from computers".
What would life be like if they did, if "computer virus" became a biological as well as a digital thing?
What if the Chief Medical Officer told everyone "YOU MUST IMMEDIATELY DISTANCE YOURSELF FROM YOUR COMPUTER BEFORE IT KILLS YOU"? Imagine the panic then - and the wailing about the economy.
Maybe we'd spend more time outdoors, enjoying nature and fresh air, and less hunched over our digital devices. That would be healthier indeed.
Maybe, without email, we'd communicate with hand-written notes, dropping them into each others' mail slots like characters were forever doing in Victorian novels.
We could have message boards in every community -- physical ones that is, on suitable walls.
We could escape the group-herding of Facebook, the mindless trash-talk of Twitter, the surveillance of Google.
This is looking better by the minute. Maybe we'd learn to remember things again, instead of just Googling them. We'd keep mind and memory in our brains instead of out-sourcing them.
We'd avoid the prison camp of Smart Cities like the one Google-Alphabet is planning for Toronto's Waterfront district -- a prison worse than any hospital, one where it's civil rights that are on life-support.
We would no longer be stalked by our devices which track us around cities and stores, reporting our movements to police and advertisers alike.
Maybe the old-fashioned Soap Box Orator would come back to the parks and squares -- anyone with ideas to share would stand up and speak, keeping free speech alive in the "agora". (Stand at the edge of the crowd to listen, if you insist on avoiding physical contact -- at least you could get to see the faces of other regulars. Actual facial recognition!)
Being outside so much we could watch birds coming and going, and the colours of trees changing, and at night notice the movement of moon and stars.
I don't know about everyone else but I'm feeling healthier already! I do get the irony of what I'm saying though: I'm telling you online how great it would be if we all went offline. So far it's but a health-work-in-progress. But thanks for the possibility, "corona" virus: if only you really did crown our lives with this silver lining.


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