Dystopia
A few days ago I saw this video that was introduced to me by fellow substacker, Turfseer. It is titled, “Beyond the Reset”. This is accurate to what I have lived through these past 3 years, especially the deterioration of the relationship between myself and my wife and often between myself and our son. Both are confirmed covidians. Unlike the main character in the film, it is not the “Great Reset” that causes the trouble, as I have not mentioned such to my wife, it is masks. We have not split yet but as I keep losing more and more work and mask refusal makes landing new positions a fantasy, once she learns why I can not replace lost hours I will most likely be thrown out. I have not been able to contribute to the family financially in over a year.
The daily repetition displayed in the film is strikingly similar. I get up, make coffee and then sit all day every day at the dinning table for Zoom lessons and reading. I only get up for more coffee, trips to the head and little else. At lunch time, I make room for the placemat between my iPads and work through lunch as my wife sits across from me on her idiot phone, very much as depicted in the film.
One thing that differed is that early in the panic, I grew my collection of Japanese incense; first by visiting temples near works site that will still hosting in person lessons and then on line as those ended. While I was unable to change the scenery, I could at least change the scentscape. Until the end of last year.
In December my wife was diagnosed with a tumor on her salivary gland. While it turned out to be benign and was removed without issue, she has come to believe that the incense played a part. Well, it can’t be the fact that she has received 4 of her company’s clot shots, so what else could it possibly be? That’s her thoughts on it. She has turned into a hypochondriac. Our son already was a hypochondriac and is even more so now.
Despite not being physically alone nor incarcerated in a facility as shown in the movie, daily life these past three years has been little different. In the early day, even though not under lockdown, nothing was open. Now that things are once again open, I no longer have enough money to go out. Even if I did, with whom would I go out with? All I knew prior to the panic are covidians. We would argue over why I was without the stupid compliance rag. They need not put us on buses and take us to camps to isolate us.
We had lots of plans for 2020 and 2021. All our reservations for camp sites over the May Golden Week 2020 were cancelled cuz covid. We were able to go a few times in the summer and Fall but later in the year and early next year many were cancelled again. The youth camping that our eldest had unhorsed the two years prior to the panic were also not held these past three years, nor was our local matsuri.
Now, this poor kid has been enrolled in a cram school and also in a competitive swim class. No camping this Golden Week but this time it is not cuz covid, it is because of the cram school and swim class schedules. Each three day weekend, he has either a test or swimming or both. We can not even go on the eki Kara hiking we started as a family a little before the panic. He was truly robbed of the last three years of his childhood as he now lives for tests in the hopes he can get into a good school. He spent all day today, Sunday, doing homework for his Wednesday night cram school.
I do not like the fact the primary school teaches only to the lowest denominator requiring families to floor the bill for both mostly meaningless grade school and for private cram schools and for children to be burdened with classes from 8 am to, in our kid’s case, 8 pm twice a week, more days in the future, homework for both school and tests three week ends a month. But that is the system here. What is not a part of any bargain is that the whole last 3 years before being fed into this system being stolen.
See the movie. As you watch it, realize that a physical prison is not needed for them to reach their aims. The damage they have done to society is unmeasurable. Likewise what they have done to the children of the world. And we let it happen.
Watched the video. Everything I want, and need to type, would get my door kicked in. Unlike many, I would not die alone.
Kitsune: My apology for the somewhat out-of-place comment. I wonder if your Japanese is not better than you admit. I am familiar with China, which is very much a closed culture. I suspect there are similarities with Japan. If you stay you should improve your already existing mastery of the language. And work at all costs, as with the father in the film Tokyo Sonata. Any work whatsoever.
However, given your writing skill, you might follow the bi-racial Japanese American author Karl Taro Greenfield who is most recently known as the writer for a popular HBO Max series "Tokyo Vice," which, although completely fictional, includes elements of the writer's own experiences in Japan. I mention bi-racial because it still unfortunately matters in the culture. That series stars the one and only Ken Watanabe. To me that is the equivalent of having Toshiro Mifune in your movie when he was alive. No offense intended with this comment, but I recognize it may be interpreted differently by a reader.