Day Seven: Escatological Anxiety

March 29, 2020 Covid Escatology

I wake up confused: Breaking with my new rhythm I don’t blink open my eyes at 7:00 but at 8:00, and it takes me a few moments to realize the clocks have swiftly changed to summer time overnight.

We bake our own bread for breakfast, feeling all proud about the loaves getting better and better with each attempt, until I find out that baking bread has become the go-to past-time for most people. In the face of flour shortages, someone even quipped on Twitter: “You know you can buy bread, right?”.

It’s curious how, despite our newfound isolation, we all seem to arrive at the same conclusions, the same ways to spend time. And isn’t baking bread the perfect way to feel productive, the perfect way to relax?

On the the Anthropocene Reviewed podcast I learn of the term “Escatological Anxiety”, the fear of the world ending. Standing there in the morning sun, hands in the dough, that anxiety briefly disappears.

I take my bike down to Kreuzberg, in part to get more bread-baking utensils from my house, and when I come back the day is half over. Social distancing has rattled my temporal sense: I wake up earlier than ever but the days just fly by. Today, missing that hour, I feel like we’ve finally become unstuck in time.

A few blocks from the house, someone has climbed on the roof and is playing the guitar for the entire neighborhood. “Guess what”, Dan writes via Whatsapp, “It’s 7 and it’s still light out.”