Israel CentenoMar 20 · 3 min read

Little by little we are closing the doors, one after the other. They’ve hidden a lot of information. It’s hard to believe, from the beginning they’ve lied, and censored. Its begung in China and now is around the world. Not only is the virus contagious, but the lying and manipulation.

Door after door, the outside is getting further and further away from us. I receive messages from my daughters and try to calm them down, I advice them to not to follow the noise generated by the panic, not to read the vodoo doctors. Get away from the influencers.

I see the piece of the world that is allowed to me from the windows, a narrow street and a corner of the park. We can still sneak out to walk the dog, if the weather is good. At that moment I let all the morning air fill my lungs. I want to feel myself breathing fully, catching life in every breath.
The numbers are alarming, everyone is using common places, how much will it cost us to flatten the curve? In lives, in freedom, in future.

By isolating ourselves, we have lost any capacity to respond as a collective. Organize ourselves as a community is the new utopia. And there is no alternative, it seems. Surrendering to this intangible enemy, to the lies of our leaders and to the terrible state of war seems the only options left. The world has agreed to show us how fragile our governments were in confronting a crisis. All fragility stems from the lies, which mutate from region to region.
We close the doors, one after the other, and we leave the outside, we confine ourselves. We must accept this in spite of all the reservations and mistrust we have of those who are in “control” of the situation.

We have all become the men of the underground, we have two paths left, resentment or maintaining hope.

I cannot help but feel that we have lost so much in so little. This is probably all subjective. I refuse to give space to conspiratorial thinking, so I meditate, quiet the noise, shut myself in my room, away from everyone’s sight, and there I read, pray, talk, contemplate, establish a dialogue with the ineffable.
If all this becomes the new normal, not all of us will enjoy the interconnection, how will we be able to finance virtual life. Virtual life is expensive and will not be for everyone. It is from there that the new class division will be born. Who has and who doesn’t have a connection and technology. There will also be gradations between those who are privileged to be connected. How long will the ability to keep people calm last.

I want to erase an image from my mind, I want to erase it by using my best human tools to conjure up misfortune. There is a recurring image and it has become my demon, maybe it has a lot to do with my background: the curve is finally flattened, by tanks of war, by military divisions, by the armed action of the army. Then I tremble, I close another door and search in my breath, in my sacred word, for the place where I can dwell away from all these end-of-the-world scenarios.