It was when I was in a painful forearm plank, describing the Flex Mentallo character from Doom Patrol to my trainer, that I realized my life had changed rather dramatically in the past month.
It’s been about five weeks since I blew positive for covid-19, and like most things that seriously disrupt one’s life, it’s taken me about three iterations of awareness to (as of this writing) feel like I’m really aware of the scope of its impact on me. There was the initial thrum of it — the quasi-relief (“ok, I couldn’t duck it forever, it finally happened”), quasi-shame (“for FUCK’S sake WHY did I get on an AIRPLANE”), quasi-solidarity (“I have joined my brethren in this most 2020s of experiences; I, too, am drinking fluids and receiving soup”) of it all.
Then, maybe a week and a half after I was testing negative again, out of quarantine, and for all intents and purposes “back to normal,” I had a steadying moment of “whoa, hey, that hit hard” where I recognized that I had not, in the moment, fully acknowledged how much the prior phase had actually impacted me. The week of naps. The perennially low mood. The fortnight’s worth of feeling like I just did not have my shit together, and the (comical, in retrospect) unwillingness to notice the very clear and obvious reason why that might be.
And then, this past week, another moment of noticing: that pretty much all of July, I wasn’t feeling myself. My energy level was depleted. My … uh … sense of self? Sense of purpose, direction? … was off-plumb. I was really sort of listless. Got deeply in my head about loneliness and loss and a lot of other shit. I got through it, it wasn’t nightmarish, I am not by any means making drama where there really was none. It was just… interesting. It was an interesting thing to notice, retroactively, like seeing something in your rear-view mirror that you thought was a mirage, and was actually a city.
Also, July was an absolute mess for my back/leg/thing. It was the month where I finally started taking the fight to the problem — lot of doctors, lot of therapists, and see above re: trainer — but it wasn’t till this afternoon that someone pointed out to me, “uh yeah, duh, you had covid” with respect to why my symptoms erupted like a mushroom cloud.
Yeah. Duh. Sorry.
“In a lot of ways Doom Patrol is about being in a state of dialogue with yourself, with your own shit and shittiness.”
Jesus, did I just pullquote my own blog? I guess I did. It was the section header “Hoss Patrol” that convinced me the past-Matt who wrote that was really on one.
Anyway. I bring all this up not to self-pity, but because I always find it interesting when my mindfulness in the moment is not fully addressing what I later come to understand to be true. More accurately — because I think that state of being is pretty much situation normal for my life and, I’d imagine, most peoples’ lives — I find the moment of awareness, of waking up, of catching the flaw in your previous understanding, extremely liberating. Not for nothing, it is the moment all meditation is driving towards, that moment of wakefulness when you notice that your awareness is not where it should be, and guide it back. There is space in that moment, and the muscle of awareness grows.
And on the other side of things, I have a hilariously real-world, working model of that “muscle of awareness” metaphor these days. To continue on the Doom Patrol / Flex Mentallo thread: due to the workouts, these past couple of weeks have gone well beyond the usual “ouch, I’ve hurt a muscle I didn’t know I had” thing that happens to me occasionally, and has chunneled straight on into a weird all-body, omni-consciousness awareness of all those muscles all the time. When something goes sideways in my adductors, I know it. When I’m not pushing off with my heels (leaning, instead, on the balls of my feet), I know it before my trainer calls me out. It’s fucking weird, man. Is this what athletes are experiencing all the time? Does Chris Hemsworth feel this way right now?
(Am I Thor?)
Oh shit I might love Moon Knight
We all know I have a fondness for pop cultural underdogs — which is a hilarious label to ascribe to any Marvel property, but fuck it, even the ruling class has its outcasts — but the more I think about Moon Knight the more I wish more of the MCU was more like that and less like whatever it’s like.
Well, Moon Knight and Eternals. Hahahaha. Fuck you internet
My tolerance for the Disney+ shows from both Marvel and Star Wars is heading towards the low end of the ebb, but Moon Knight is a cycle I keep thinking about, mostly because of how committed it was to doing something with every episode, instead of just moving things along for episodes 3, 4, and 5 like most of these 6-episode messes. (Looking at you, otherwise-beloved Ms. Marvel.) I think this is really important for TV, and I’m thinking about it more and more these days; the idea that TV, as a medium, has to stop positioning itself as a “6-hour movie sushi-chopped into pieces” and realize that each piece, itself, is the art form.
Moon Knight — which contains almost nothing of the titular knight who lives on the moon (with Captain Rogers) — does that better than most, albeit not perfectly; and besides, some of those episodes swing away, man. I’m excited to see what Benson and Moorhead do with the second season of Loki, because their episodes of MK had solid visual logic and a real sense of the evocative fun of the Jekyll/Hyde premise. I’m excited to see Oscar Isaac return to the MCU in pretty much any capacity, because — even given that the MCU’s foundational strength has been casting charismatic, committed actors and letting them own their characters as half-actor, half-goodwill ambassador — he has really defined the art form for what you can do, performancewise, in one of these things. I have no idea how crossing Steven Grant / Marc Spector over into the Avengers would even work, tonally; but, maybe he can turn up in whatever Black Knight / Blade thing I absolutely insist they are doing, based on the Eternals second stinger.
Whatever happens, Moon Knight and my feelings about it after the fact — and even the fact that I have feelings about it after the fact, which is becoming less and less likely in this era of omnicontent that Disney+ is smothering us with — has been a welcome reminder that this stuff is, should be, and can still be, fun.
Also. I’m going to Cairo.