The poetics of body language

& a pandemic lookback

Five years ago, I threw a rodeo-themed birthday party for my cat.

In reality, it was a party for five of my friends all born in the month of March. But my cat was turning the big 0-1, so he was the excuse.

And I leaned in. I tied mini bandanas to Corona bottles. I served “walking tacos”—individual Frito bags guests could dump toppings into. I had custom pins made for each birthday babe to announce their new age in cat years.

Little did I know this would be everyone’s last event.

From then on, whenever someone waxed nostalgic on a Zoom call about The Last Social Gathering Before Lockdown, roughly thirty people were obliged to say “I went to a cat’s birthday party. He hid under the bed the whole time.”

But this is how it is with catastrophe. There is no foreshadowing (though the Corona bottles might count). One day, you’re wrangling a cat into a cowboy costume. The next, you’re receiving five emails that start with “Now more than ever…”

the first virtual happy hour

There was so much language thrown around in those early months. These were “unprecedented times” in which our job was to “flatten the curve” as we “navigated this new normal.”

Hot Pockets was “standing with essential workers.” Ace Hardware was “here for you” as Swiffer promised to “keep your loved ones safe.” And a reminder from Duke’s Mayonnaise: “We’re in this together.”

Truthfully, I can’t fault them. To get creative was to take a big risk. See: celebrities singing a song about a borderless world… while we were confined to the borders of our yards.

We were all just trying to find the words. And really, words were all we had. There was no sharing sighs with a stranger when the bus showed up full. No working a puzzle with a grandparent. No sitting in silence in the company of others equally at a loss for words.

And though I believe in the power of language—more than I believe in anything—even I started to recognize just how much of communication is non-verbal.

TikTok dance class (“Savage”)

I work with a company that held a meeting this week called “Marking five years of COVID.” At first it struck me as odd, like they were going to end by passing out Olive Garden gift cards and company-branded sweatshirts. “Happy Covid-aversary! Thank you for your dedication!”

But then I imagined the meeting creator, staring at the blinking cursor. What else could they possibly write?

Tragedies, too, have anniversaries. They don’t make for good greeting cards. Or custom pins with your age in cat years. But are they not worth marking? If for no other reason than that they turned something unprecedented, precedented? That they primed us for some future unfathomability?

poetry group gone virtual, made more bearable by fun hats

I don’t believe in wrangling tragedy into parables. Life isn’t a fable with a lesson. But I do believe in wrangling separation into sentences, which is to say I believe in trying to make sense of things. I think the trying is the point.

So to mark this covid-aversary, I’m sharing a poem I wrote five years ago, when words were “all we had to reach with.” I hope it takes you back—and forward—just enough.

PS — A very happy sixth birthday to Dr. Frasier Crane.

🐱
Emma