It has been two weeks since I’ve left the residential property line. There’s talk of the indefinite curfew living up to its name.
Meanwhile, as the gates remain locked and the state’s goons patrol the streets arresting the poor and warning the rich, one thought dominates the mind’s airwaves. How long till madness comes knocking? Will it wait to be invited in or will it take the warrantless approach?
I don’t mean the madness of the times. Not the madness of a virus covering the globe yet the experts can still hardly explain. Not the madness of watching a world react in horrifying incoordination while the media callously reports body counts and canceled sporting events as if both are of equal importance. Not the madness of some in the so-called affluent world facing the possibility of running out of food, water, and maybe air. Or is it time they’re running out of?
I mean madness of the mind. The madness that comes when strict routines are interrupted. The madness when one is forced into disciplinary behavior reminiscent of school days but one has been an adult for decades. The madness of idleness after a lifetime of marching orders under capitalism’s unforgiving glare threatening starvation for the disobedient. How is one to keep that madness at bay?
Perhaps it manifests itself as a madness of losing control. A local news story reported a few days into curfew that a man had gone mad being forced to stay at home and beat up dozens of members of his own family. Australia has passed millions in funding to tackle domestic violence as a fallout of the virus. France has begun putting domestic violence victims up in hotels as numbers have risen in the first week of their lockdown.
Or perhaps the madness will be akin to zoochosis. A friend recently reminded that living beings with zoochosis are (un)fortunately unaware of their condition. They exhibit behaviors beyond their control and also beyond their knowing as a result of their monotonous, caged conditions. There are only signs to the outside world looking in. But zoochosis seems to take time. Perhaps therein lies the difference: a crack in sanity, madness, does not. Let’s at least hope.
A character in a short story by the great Chekhov once uttered: “Yes, I’m ill. But tens, hundreds of madmen roam around at will, because you in your ignorance cannot distinguish them from the sane.” Perhaps if that time does come, when in the face of full blown zoochosis one loses the very facets of one’s being and thereby becomes colloquially “mad,” the best one could hope for is for such a final, conscious thought. A last laugh to not let the madness or the ignorant win.
After all, in a world gone mad, who is to decide which of us remains sane?
