So it looks like we have another three weeks of lock down. After that, I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘screwsocialdistancing’ started to trend and as I sit here this morning and think about that, I can see myself readily taking to the streets to join such a protest. I can feel my own mental health beginning to fray. I feel mostly fine, but the subtle signs that our bodies send us to indicate all is not well are there. I’m not sleeping so well, my temper is shortening and I’m finding it hard to concentrate.
Periods of great social upheaval and change often provide us with unique opportunities to see our otherwise fixed mindset from an oblique angle; they allow us to more readily imagine the otherwise unimaginable and perhaps change the things we wouldn’t otherwise countenance changing.
I am not challenging our response to this pandemic just yet. It was very apparent that we faced the very real risk of NHS capacity being reached and patients who would otherwise survive being offered alternative places in an early grave. And yet when you compare our response to this virus with say our response to homelessness, mental health, addiction, poverty etc, it’s quite remarkable how catalysed we can be. In comparison to the virus, every past effort to solve those deep seated social problems would make Hamlet look positively zealous.
Star Garden is where my friend Ivan keeps his sheep. It’s where he lived for several years in a caravan that he shared with the mice, sometimes the sheep and almost certainly a whole host of other companions that we might find distasteful. It is where he experienced malice and oppression, was called all manner of unspeakable things that sully our humanity and as the hatred in others grew, so did his psychosis. This space however represents his escape from that dark place. It is where he is most happy and the most applied to productive work. He still has his caravan and still stays there from time to time to tend the sheep. He has built a workout station from scaffolding poles that he uses to perform remarkable feats of strength and agility.
It is also the home to two other young men who otherwise have no place in society. I do not know what brought them here but I am sure that what keeps them here is the dark pit of their mind that is infected with a virus we as a society are ambivalent towards and unwilling to address. It is the place these young men go to, like so many others, to be forgotten.
