2021: Somewhere becoming rain
2021 has announced itself, unsurprisingly, with rain – sheets of it, blanketing our Upper Thomson neighbourhood. For those looking for signs of a calmer, brighter beginning (and let’s be honest, who isn’t?), the early downpour seems a reminder that the dark clouds of 2020 aren’t entirely behind us yet.
Last weekend, Cherie and I had three dear friends over for lunch, fellow writers who serve as volunteers and community organisers, in addition to their day-jobs in the construction sector. Each obtained permission to leave his dorm for this brief visit, and one went for a routine swab test immediately after. It was a small celebration of sorts, that things had improved from the worst of the dorm outbreaks at the middle of the year, so much so that we could meet safely in person. But over nasi lemak and tea, they also shared stories of how the long tail of the crisis would continue to take a toll on their colleagues and compatriots, as well as families at home.
There have been many opportunities to ‘take stock’ over the past year, each with the same conclusion: that the crisis has highlighted gaps that already exist in the status quo, and the work of addressing these must continue even after we tide over this season. If anything, COVID-19 has shone a clarifying light on unmet needs, returned overlooked questions to the agenda, and reminded us of the extent to which ‘normal’ is a luxury – precarious for some, precious to all.
On a personal level, too, the past year has been clarifying in its many challenges. There is much to be thankful for; not least the opportunity to be involved in some of the short- and long-term work above, built on solid, hopeful responses across different skills and sectors. In my own writing, the publication of Moving House has opened new doors to engage with issues of migration and citizenship, and I’ve also been grateful for the chance to tackle other topics through creative nonfiction (not to mention some highly rewarding collaborations). But the question remains: with so much to be done, what can or should I do, and what will sustain me in doing so?
A year or two ago, it would have been too easy to fall back on the rough-and-ready answer I gave myself at university: if it is a good thing to do, and no-one is doing it, why not you? I’d like to think that 2020 has made me more circumspect; there are in fact many good reasons why none of us should see ourselves as solutions to any and every problem. Yet another, more recent conversation has left things equally unresolved. Sometimes before you jump into the fire, went the well-meaning advice of an old friend, I’ve found that you need to ask, ‘what’s in it for me?’
I know I've lifted the line from its context (an encouragement to temper valour with discretion), and indeed treasure his counsel. Still, it struck a discordant note against the glimmers of light which, despite everything, made 2020 a little better: from frontliners’ everyday heroics, to the personal and professional risks undertaken by journalists, volunteers, and – yes – migrant workers who refused to be bystanders, nevermind the costs. Surely they lived by a different, more exemplary calculus? As Zakir said, over our lunch, I think about my ownself later, community always first.
Isn’t this, after all, what 2020 has left us: in our isolation, nothing but each other? And from this, not a blind or abstract commitment to ‘togetherness’ for its own sake, but a renewal of the faith that it is precisely in community that we are meant to find our good, and thus to ‘seek the welfare of the city’ above our own advantage?
More questions than answers, to enter a new year with. What comes to mind are these lines, from the last stanza of Philip Larkin’s ‘The Whitsun Weddings’:
‘…And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.’
I’m not one for resolutions, but I hope we’ll greet 2021 with a new awareness of the ‘frail / travelling coincidence’ that binds us here together. Or what’s even better, perhaps – the ‘power / that being changed can give.’