To Be Read in One Hundred Years
My Message in a Bottle
I often think of personal journaling during the time of Covid as a message in a bottle. A lot of what I’ve been honoring on Medium is a form of personal note-taking. . . and truthfully, it shouldn’t be read for at least 100 years. So far, so good. Little has been read, and I trust Medium’s stats accuracy. For me, this is a good place to hide my take on this pandemic, and yet allow the trust between me and Medium to grow. The site is doing exactly what I want it to do — -archive. I am trusting the work to withstand the test of time, unless, of course, they’re hacked.
One of the reasons I’m preparing notes in this way is to keep them organized (sort of) and final. They move through the month of March 2021 as a grand finale of my worries, my observances, and strange relevance to pandemic-related subjects. After all, I wrote about just such an event. To tell you the truth, it wasn’t like this rendition at all. . . but then I don’t know everything that’s transpiring. In 100 years, humankind might.
It’s interesting that the first few articles I wrote last year were varied and kind of quirky, except for the first one. It told the most, and still does, about me, the author of a book about a bird flu pandemic. I could relate to what I remembered about the science of such an event. And I could still remember the conflicts I felt about people’s lives, the unfairness of mega-disease, sweeping statements that disease is the great equalizer, that it embodies generations of die-outs, both human and animal. Now that I’ve lived through almost a year-and-one-half of Covid, there is no longer a clear framework around it, like there was when writing a book over a decade ago.
Covid is sloppy and evolutionary, direct and receding, reminding me of waves that bring in the mystery and disparity of the ocean. Just because it’s large, disease (like an ocean) doesn’t always fight with everything it has, but can liquidate an entire population of those who live too close. The same can be said of the last few months, and it’s been a huge canvas on which to journal thoughts and feelings that are so far from my door. I’ve taken my time and more than once stopped writing about it. But I return to the idea that leaving my thoughts out of this stream of time is stepping away perhaps exactly at the wrong time. I’ve been spared the disease (so far), and maybe there’s a reason.
I will continue to write a few more notes on Medium, taking the month of March (2021) to wrap them up. Then, I’ll submit them to the National Women’s History Museum to a project called Women Writing History: A Coronavirus Journaling Project. “The journals will be used as a living archive of women’s lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as for online and physical exhibits, articles and stories. This archive will also hold a special place in the future physical site of the National Women’s History Museum.”
This is an important aspect of writing — to recognize the time you live in, especially as a woman. We are destiny-keepers, the gardeners of hope and sometimes great logic, and we bring a sense of continued survival, despite the setbacks to our species. I want to leave a touch of mystery behind, as if I were burying something valuable on Medium — -because I am. I am stashing my note-taking here, leaving it for time and tide. It is my way of disappearing for the moment to get other things done, yet knowing a woman’s writing treasure can be safely contained (and added to) here. After all, in regard to a pandemic, this may be the first time in history a message in a bottle has washed ashore on Medium.
