Dear Reader,
Luca asked me to submit something to Critica. I said no. My pockets are empty. He said yes. I bet they aren’t. His smile, warmth and wisdom were infectious: he was my first supervisor at Mt. Zion when I made the transition from academics to clinical work — so here’s the beginning of a paper on which I’m working.
– Julie G.
“The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded the front “swept” yard that was never swept-where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance”
— Harper Lee from To Kill a Mockingbird
And then the virus came and we all stayed home. And then the virus came and those of us who could, those of us who had homes, comfortable wifi-connected homes, worked from home in the containing comforts of our personal lives. We worked from home because we were able to work from home: the well worn truth of caste. The impact of the pandemic has not been equally distributed amongst us. Not at all. While caste privilege has destined some of us for longer, healthier, more creature comfort lives, “our most economically challenged, marginalized and otherwise vulnerable populations” (Kuchuck, 2021) haven’t the same protections from trauma and the multiple intrusions, disasters, ruptures in life’s going-on-being caused by Covid.F or most of us here, guilty expenditures were smuggled into the daily routine under the cover of home improvements: catching up with long delayed home projects. Dogs bark! Announcing the Amazon deliveries which often happen more than once a day. I ask Steve to unbox the overly packaged items as a way of avoiding the surplus waste. I can hardly face the self-revelation: the indulgence of my awakened, curated appetites. A more thoughtful confession, of course, would include mention of the desperate attempts at self-restoration in the face of despair and the many ongoing, overwhelming threats to life — another-round of the COVID pandemic, ravaging out of control wildfires and deadly hurricanes as embodiments of the looming climate crisis, the reckoning with centuries of racism-white privilege as well as the sudden disconnect from self-defining, reassuring everyday routines. We find ourselves inhabited by states of fear, isolation, loss and loneliness in which we are siloed by the virus. Homesick for domestic routines, friends, colleagues, family.Missing terribly those we love and need. Our roots wrapped around their beloved bones. So we joined book groups and read Camus, Baldwin, Barry, Wilkerson, Lourde …. and began our mornings with MSNBC and the latest assemblage of data from Fauci: the effigy of science-based knowledge, wisdom, caution and compassion. Facts, truth, data, statistics: the model of predictive science took on its erstwhile glory. Indeed, an anxious repurposing of a positivist frame of mind: masks, social distancing, hand-washing and, of course, vaccines all “proven” to be highly effective shields against disease. In the fall of 2020, the history books will proclaim, kids were sent to college to study science. Enrollment in STEM majors soared refocusing attention away from the inexorable drum roll of death within the sanatorium in Mann’s Magic Mountain or the virulent decay in Death in Venice. As we now realize, caste privilege needs our thoughtfulness, our commitment. Self-absorption is no longer a legitimate rationale for mindlessly indulging our habits and routines. This is a time of reckoning, of soul-searching through the many layers of our denial and self-deceit. Fortunately, our reflexive uptake of our privileged access to many unearned opportunities has been searingly interpellated by the imploring internal voices of white guilt so compellingly articulated by Baldwin (1962), Guralnik (2010) and Caflisch (2020) to name a few. With this in mind, let me think out loud about what lies hidden in plain sight in the being and bearing of the house next door. The shabby, dilapidated, somewhat ominous eye-sore next door. Indeed, it announces itself as a proud performative with its TAX THE RICH poster emblazoned on the splintered, rotted front door. The following essay is catalyzed by my unease when patients remark on the house next door.
The Haunted House
