On the Cusp of Double Digits

Time bends

😬

About a year after the worst of the COVID lockdowns were over, I noticed that time didn’t work the way it used to. I know the concept of linear time is a construct, but, generally speaking, we experienced the intervals humans created in a way that was, for the most part, consistent. One day might feel longer than another, but you never mistook it for a week or a month.

That no longer felt true. I found myself losing track of days—even months—in a way I never had before. I named this feeling of having been unmoored from the mechanism by which we measure, and keep track of our lives, “COVID induced temporal dislocation.” This was not limited to those who’d had COVID (I haven’t—at least not yet), but to everybody who made it through the lockdowns and isolation

That spring and summer of 2020 was the first time in my life I felt time as a wave that was experientially unlike anything I’d lived through.I still feel outside of time on occasion and the absolutely unrelenting and ferocious velocity with which the news keeps coming at us isn’t helping.

Because of this, and because we are only 99 days out from the election, I’ve decided to keep my Sunday show a Q&A—there is so much of consequence unfolding (almost constantly), and I want to hear what is of most concern to all of you.

This morning, as I was thinking about the show and what we might talk about, I could not for the life of me remember what the biggest event of the last seven days was. A lot of major news broke—the impeccable rollout of the support that coalesced Vice President Harris; the beautifully choreographed roll-out of her campaign; the off-the-charts enthusiasm of (and fund-raising from) the Democratic base; the increasingly fascistic rhetoric coming from Donald at his rallies; the Democrat’s search for a vice presidential pick (which is actually exciting, not boring); the swift change in fortunes for Donald’s VP pick, the vile, misogynistic, and deeply weird, J.D. Vance.

There was something else that proceeded all of this, wasn’t there? I knew there was, but couldn’t remember. I called a friend of mine to ask what last week’s biggest news was, and she reminded me that President Biden announced on Sunday that he was not running for re-election. I didn’t believe her, at first. Surely that was two or three weeks ago? But, no, Biden’s announcement was the penultimate piece of seismic news (followed by his endorsement of Harris) that dropped in what will almost certainly go down in history as the most bizarre, dangerous, and momentous month in modern American politics.

So, I’d love to know how you’re processing all of this. Please put your questions and observations in the comments and I’ll get to as many of them as possible on this evening’s live “Ask Mary Anything (within Reason).” I really hope to see all of you there.