In a special ‘Finding Hope’ issue on the way Covid-19 has changed our world, Time magazine asked some famous people to share their insights into how to navigate the new reality and offer ideas on the challenges, large and small, that we must face together. Margaret Atwood, author of 50 books including The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, was among them.
There are few more qualified to write about matters apocryphal than Atwood.
In an article entitled ‘Leaping the Moat’, the Canadian novelist began by asking the question: Do you think you remember a movie in which a knight gallops toward a castle just as its drawbridge is going up, and his white horse jumps the moat in one glorious airborne leap? She could picture it too but when she went online in search of the image, she had little luck.
THAT RIDER
All Atwood could find was a couple of cars sailing over rivers using lift bridges and the Pink Panther detective flailing around in the water, having missed. Nonetheless, we’re that rider. Chasing us is the dreaded coronavirus. We’re in midair, hoping we make it to the other side, where life will have returned to what we think of as normal.
What should we do while we’re up there, between now and then?
Elizabeth Moss in the TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tail
Atwood says we should think of all the things we hope will still be there in that castle of the future when we get across. Then, we should do what we can, now, to make them a reality. Health care workers go without saying in that Castle Future. But what made your life worth living when life was ‘normal’ – apart from your family and close friends?
We each have our own post-Covid bucket lists; Atwood happily shares hers.
She says some we take for granted, like our favourite restaurants and cafés.
SUPPORT
To help them over the jump, we should order takeout and buy gift vouchers. Support your local bookstore. So too your trusted newspapers and magazines. Democracy is increasingly under pressure and a global pandemic could be the ideal opportunity for an authoritarian regime to toss civil liberties, freedoms and human rights out the window.
Give subscriptions. Support sites that combat fake news and others that fight for responsible free speech. Art allows us express our humanity, in all its glory. Donate, purchase gift vouchers and buy tickets for online events. Finally, keep the faith. Atwood says that you can make it across that moat. Yes things are scary and unpleasant right now.
People are dying. People are losing their jobs and are feeling helpless and stressed. It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times. How you experience this time will be, in part, up to you. Rejoice. Atwood finishes her ‘Finding Hope’ article by saying that if you’re reading this, you’re alive – or so she might assume. If you’re not, she says, she’s in for a big surprise.
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Here’s this week’s jokes…
An alternative closing scene to Sally Rooney’s Normal People: the couple slow-dancing to Tom Jones’s ‘Please Release Me, Let Me Go’ and Leonard Cohen’s ‘So Long Marianne’.
Tricky isn’t it, you’re in a mosque and everyone’s praying and you really love leapfrogging.
Who’s the most unpopular fan at Borussia Monchengladbach games? The one who shouts out from the stands: “Give us a ‘B’, give us an ‘O’…”
Blind people should avoid skydiving – it scares the hell out of their dogs.
Marty Morrissey has a face which convinces you that God is a cartoonist.
Dave was a waiter on a train on the Russian Front. One guy would serve a tray of snacks and Dave would duly follow with drinks. As he said at his trial, he was only following hors d’oeuvres.
Dickie, what’s another jeer? Rock on!
Albinos. You can’t say fairer than that.
Ballet? Men wearing pants so tight you can tell their religion.
The difference between a set of bagpipes and a raw onion? No one cries when you slice up the bagpipes.
Cornucopia. A stress-relieving breakfast cereal.
Insomnia is a nightmare. But on the plus side, only three more sleeps to Christmas.
