Dispatches From a World That Has Stopped

I woke up this morning to a world that has stopped.

What specifically woke me up this morning was a text from the government, the first time I have ever received such a thing, informing me that indeed the world has stopped as of noon today. I can no longer leave the house without a signed affidavit stating that my presence on the street was for emergency or essential purposes.

I knew this already, but receiving it in SMS form somehow made it much more real.

What woke me up was that text, but what kept me awake was the silence.

No people. No cars. No buses.

The schoolyard behind my house was empty and silent, despite it being a sunny Monday morning.

Even the birds seemed to decide to stay silent this morning.

I stayed in bed as the sun moved across the sky. I had nowhere to go, and there was nowhere to go even if I could leave the house, but all the same, the desire to leave the apartment grew with every hour that passed.

By mid-afternoon, it was maddening.

I looked over at the cat, and for the first time, I truly understood why she militantly protests every time she comes across a closed door. It has nothing to do with what was or was not on the other side. It is simply the inability to pass through that produces the desire to do so. And on Day 1 of what will be at minimum two weeks’ of legally enforced confinement, I am already scratching at the door, so to speak.

This is not the first time that I have woken up to a world that had stopped.

The last time was half a lifetime ago, and a continent away. That time, unlike this time, the world stopped in an instant. That time, unlike this time, I defied orders to stay home.

I left not only my home but first my neighborhood and then my borough, crossing a bridge into the midst of a war zone, Jedi mind-tricking my way past police and military guards and metal barriers. I was younger then, and arguably much braver, at least as far as the foolish type of bravery goes.

I made my way past street after street, empty of all traffic, whether it be two wheels or four, two legs or four, for the first time in history, for the first time in four-hundred years, for the first time since Dutch colonists had built a fort and then a wall around it and declared that land to be ‘theirs’.

I made my way to one of the busiest and most famous intersections in the world, made my way to the middle of the street, and laid down as though I was going to make a snow angel in the thin layer of white soot, the remainders of what until the day before had been buildings and bodies.

I then formed myself into a log and rolled my way clear across Sixth Avenue, in the presence of about half a dozen onlookers who had broken the same rules that I had in order to be there in that moment. I rolled across Sixth Avenue with a point and a purpose rooted in both present and future—knowing that it was the first time in history that the street was sufficiently empty enough to do so without being harmed, and in the hopes that it would be the last time that one could do this.

That was eighteen and a half years ago, almost to the day. That was September 12, 2001, in the middle of Manhattan Island. And although the circumstances of this stopping of the world are notably different from that one, there is an eerily similar feeling that I simply cannot shake.

Despite my hopes and intentions while rolling across Sixth Avenue half a lifetime ago, I knew in that moment that it would not be the last day in my lifetime that I would witness the stopping of the world. And yet, I confess that I envisioned the next instance to be more akin to a crisis in the vein of WWI as opposed to the Spanish Flu pandemic that followed.

Especially given the trajectory of the world in the eighteen-and-a-half years since that moment, this seems on the surface to be quite the deviation from the expected plot twist. But of course, in reality, the true deviation from the overall story arc that is the history of mankind is the fact that it has been a hundred years since we collectively faced this type of global fear.

I suppose we were due, or something like that. And yet all the same, I find myself anything but prepared.

The last time the world stopped, it did so because thousands died in an instant. This time, the world has stopped in order to prevent the deaths of thousands, possibly millions. But of course, acting in the interest of prevention tends to be more difficult than acting in the shadow of a disaster.

Here in Brittany, the weather echoes that of Seattle or Portland, where it rains non-stop throughout the late fall and winter. But unlike in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, spring does not sneak up in the same way. One day, usually in early to mid-March, the rains simply stop, the sun and the birds and the flowers come out overnight, and so do the all of the people.

Here in Brittany, the sunlight acts as a magnet, drawing everyone out of their dwellings, dazed looks upon their faces as they stare upward at the yellow sphere in the sky that has shown itself for the first time in months. Here in Brittany, the strength of that magnet understandably held more power over the past week than the recommendations of the government to practice social distancing. And as a result, for many of us, it was the strength of that magnet that foreshadowed what was to come.

One week ago, when the sun first came out, the world here seemed a drastically different place.

One week ago, I met up with my best friend here in downtown Rennes, my best friend who has been living in Luxembourg since November and was here for a visit over the next few days.

“You came just in time for Spring,” I told him.

At the moment, what was happening in Italy seemed very far away.

The next day, last Wednesday morning, we walked to the local farmers’ market. Everyone else was out and about as well, a crowd of people in a crowded place, everyone doing exactly what we were warned not to do. It was at that moment when I sensed what the trajectory would be.

Thursday morning, it was announced that President Macron would be addressing the nation in the evening. We spent the day out and about again, pulled in by the yellow magnet in the sky and the realization that it might be a long while before we saw each other again.

We were in the centre-ville that evening, having forgotten that the press conference was occurring, when suddenly a group of university students ran past us, a case of beer hoisted over their head, yelling “Merci, Macron!”

I looked over at Rhyd. “They just closed the schools until further notice,” I said, a combination of cheer and worry in my voice. Cheer because my husband works at the university, which means that he was on paid vacation and/or telecommuting until further notice. Worry, because I knew this would inevitably lead to a nationwide quarantine.

Friday morning, Rhyd went back to Luxembourg. Later that day, I headed out to my normal haunt in the centre-ville to get some work done, knowing on one hand that I should probably stay home but knowing on the other hand that this might be the last time in a long while that I would have the opportunity to do so.

When I got there, I overheard the owner telling his employees that it was likely that all the bars would be shut down in the next few days. Despite this knowledge, it felt like a normal Friday night there. Perhaps a bit too normal.

The next day, Saturday, it was announced that all bars, restaurants, stores other than groceries, cinemas, and other “non-essential” businesses would be closed until further notice. And as photos were posted Saturday afternoon of the streets of Paris, where countless people were gathered and socializing in close quarters despite everything being closed, pulled in by that yellow magnet in the sky and the warmth that it brought with it, I knew that the next government announcement would be a full confinement.

In the United States, most panicked people buy toilet paper because most Americans have no idea how to actually prepare for an emergency situation. My personal (and admittedly snarky) theory is that running through the various doomsday scenarios in their heads leaves them feeling like they’re going to shit their pants, and so they prioritize the ability to do so as cleanly as possible, forgetting in their panic that you can’t eat toilet paper.

In France, on the other hand, there is a much deeper collective understanding of how to prepare for hard times. For the older generation, life under German occupation and the years of food shortages that followed are part of their living memory, and those lessons for the most part were passed onto their children. And even beyond the direct passing of such knowledge, there is an ancestral vein of wisdom that runs through the bodies of those whose forefathers endured over a thousand years’ worth of near-constant warfare on these lands.

And so, when I went to the store Monday afternoon, only a few hours before a national press conference where we expected to be put under quarantine, there was still plenty of toilet paper, as well as bottled water. What I couldn’t find, however, were the practical items that I had gone in search of: no sugar, no flour, no eggs, no milk.

My plans of spending the next two weeks baking cookies were dead on arrival.

I was able to grab the very last Reblochon and the last dozen or so potatoes. At least we’ll have a tartiflette at some point in the week, I said to myself. I looked down at the beer aisle, but given that my sack was already full and I was on foot, I decided to go back later for the beer. Two hours later, upon returning to the grocery store, I cursed myself for my lack of foresight. Bretons being Bretons, in my absence the beer aisle had also been stripped bare.

What had also been stripped bare in that two hour absence was any semblance of ‘faking it’ as far as everyone’s emotional state was concerned. And the obvious fear and panic that was displayed clearly on the faces around me instantly brought me back to the last time the world had stopped, to the scenes that played out in the grocery stores in New York City in the hours after the attack. And in that two hour absence, the announcement we had feared had finally come forth and was made official. As of the next day at noon, we would all be legally confined to our houses until further notice, a confining that would be strictly enforced by the police and military.

I grabbed the last box of Côtes-du-Rhône and headed home for the night, my temporary loss of freedom commencing as the door to my building closed behind me.

I woke up on this morning in a world that had stopped with a mild headache and a dry cough.

I know exactly why, mind you. It has everything to do with dulling my panic the night before with that box of Côtes-du-Rhône and the additional fact that we decided to usher out the world that we knew we were leaving behind by singing karaoke at the top of our lungs until midnight.

I know all of this, and yet I worry nonetheless, as worry is in the air and is arguably much more contagious right now than the virus itself, and unlike the virus, that specific contagion that is worry and fear cannot be stopped by quarantining ourselves in our homes.

And so I let the irrational emotions run their course as I remained in bed in the eerie silence, and then eventually logic took over and I convinced myself that I indeed was not coming down with coronavirus and subsequently pulled myself out of bed.

I went into the salon and sat by the window, where I still remain several hours later as I write this.

As a New Yorker living in France, living in a world that has stopped carries with it a specific cultural trauma that my friends, my neighbors, and my partner here do not share. It carries recollections and triggers that I honestly thought I left behind on the other side of the ocean. It carries the reminder of how we are defined and wired by past traumas, and the insidious manner in which such traumatic events weave themselves into our DNA.

But as I sit at my window, on this gorgeous spring day that the entire nation must forego, watching the officers walking down the sidewalk below my building, I am also reminded that as a New Yorker, as an American, there is a completely separate cultural trauma that I am just as removed from as everyone else is removed from mine.

Once again, albeit temporarily, this is a country seemingly under occupation, where an approximate 100,000 officers and soldiers are tasked with patrolling the streets, where freedom of movement has been restricted and papers must be carried and will be checked at all times, where there are shortages of basic foodstuffs and other supplies, where there is a fear that anyone amongst us could die at any time.

And I can only imagine what kind of emotions and memories are being triggered in those who are old enough to remember a time when this country was truly under occupation, who unfortunately are also the ones that already have the most to fear, the ones whose level of risk in this scenario is the reason why such drastic measures are being taken in the first place.

These thoughts swirl through my head as I sit at the window, as that yellow magnet in the sky calls to me as seductively and cruelly as ever.

The last time the world stopped, half my lifetime ago, we all knew instantly that everything from that point forward would be different. We knew instantly that the life we had lived the day before was a life that we would never return to.

And within the war zone, within the borders and boundaries of the city-as-target, there was a brief but memorable period where we held nothing but hope for the future, a hope inspired by the collective experience of a city that had come together to help one another so bravely and selflessly in our greatest time of need. A hope that was quickly crushed by the reaction of those outside the borders of the city-as-target, the atrocious displays of racism and xenophobia, the swift curtailing of civil liberties, and the march towards foreign invasion that followed.

And once again, we stand at a similar crossroads. Once again, nothing will ever be quite the same.

Once again, so many of us sense hope amidst the panic. Once again, there is beauty amidst the horror.

Once again, the world can potentially veer in one of two opposing directions, once again the uncertainty of the moment can be wielded to serve humanity, or it can be wielded to serve empire.

I like to think that I’m wiser now than I was back then, and yet I’m clinging to hope all the same.

ALLEY VALKYRIE

Alley is a co-founder of Gods&Radicals Press, and lives in Rennes, Bretagne. Her latest book is Of Monsters and Miso.