Chronicles of Exile: Chevengur, and Return
Tora Lane locates a problem of modernity as a “fear of finitude”; she writes, “Modernity...thinks of continuity as the replacement of one time by another, and will therefore constantly chase its linear projection and be blind to the incongruities of the time” (Lane 56). Modern society relies on an illusion of progress, of momentous events leading society forward and upward along a cohesive, coherent trajectory. This is one of many illusions that disintegrated plainly in front of my eyes when the global pandemic broke out and I was confined with my parents in the house I grew up in. In a matter of days, the country shut down, and cracks began appearing in this continuous upward trajectory, on a global scale and in my daily experience of time. After two weeks in confinement, my journal shifted, from to-do lists, check marks, proof of daily existence, to an inward roaming of sorts, one marked by subscendence rather than directed momentum.
April 3rd: The days are blurring together... I can barely remember what day of the week it is. It’s difficult to focus when news of the pandemic is crushing, and work feels meaningless when I’m alone. There is an excess of time.
Moving forward sometimes feels like you’re going backward. It doesn’t feel good. Especially right now. I am in a state of heightened agitation...
...Time has become irrelevant; in fact it has almost completely dissolved. Existence is a continuation of activities that are put down and resumed as the sun rises and sets. Now, maybe we can all stop pretending we have anything figured out or decided upon.
I also began having troubling and vivid dreams that would seep into my waking life:
I must’ve only slept for an hour, maybe two. I dreamt of an old VHS movie, the credits rolling, on a street somewhere in New England. I leaned forward and fell into the scene, and I was suddenly standing there on the pavement. I looked down and saw a fork. I turned, making a sudden movement, and the fork went straight through the bottom of my foot. It hurt a bit, and when I pulled it out, people
