Amazon Oh Amazon Please Don’t Be Out Of Stock, If I Can’t Depend on You I am Totally Fucked
I was trolling on Amazon, hoping to find those precious pandemic goods — toilet paper, disinfectants, hand sanitizer — to add to my stash. Out of stock, out of stock, out of stock, is all I kept encountering. Frustrated that good ole’ dependable Amazon just couldn’t be depended on anymore to bring me the stuff I want, the stuff I NEED, I got to thinking about an old Amazon inspired contemplation I had had years ago that really helped me understand that I have no control in this world; I simply have the illusion of control (here is the blog entry if you want a look: Amazon oh Amazon Bring Me My Box).
The issue I came to recognize in that old contemplation was rearing its ugly head again: I see particular reasons, manifest through rupa, and have pattern recognition — X set of reasons will likely yield Y set of results. The problem is that this equation is born out in/processed through my memory and imagination, not in reality. For some amount of time this ‘pattern recognition’ can be close enough to predictive that it feeds the ego. It reinforces my memory and imagination and makes me believe that I am omniscient.
I hit the order button I get the Amazon box. I hit the order button I get the Amazon box, I hit the button I get the Amazon box… Because I don’t see all the innerworkings between button and box, suddenly I think I am the cause, or at least a partial cause, or at least that I know what the world will bring – a box. Even when I didn’t get a box, I considered it an outlier, not evidence of my flawed vision of the relationship between button and box.. Not of my incomplete understanding of that supply chain, of its vulnerability, of the tiny discrepancies that occurred each time.
Now we are in a pandemic. A shift, a new world order so drastically different than what I remember came before simple isn’t all that predictive at all; now it is becoming more common that when I hit the button I don’t get a box. That something is out of stock. That transport is delayed. Suddenly the patterns I thought I recognized deviate so much from my past experience that it lays bare the truth that I can’t possibly control this world, it isn’t going how I want it to, hell, I couldn’t even have predicted it going the way that it has. How do you prepare for the unpredictable? And if you can’t prepare, what hope is there for control?
When I consider the pandemic more broadly I realize there are reasons in the 4e virus and human bodies, reasons for government response, reasons for healthcare abilities and limitations. So many reasons that come together to result in this pandemic and its effects on society. I don’t want to be locked at home. I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want other folks to suffer. But how on earth can I expect to overcome all the reasons that led to these results? I can’t even create the reasons to acquire the toilet paper I need — I keep trying to hit a button, but Amazon has no boxes to bring me.
Before this pandemic, my contemplations had started gelling around the idea that the past is gone. The particular alignment of reasons that brought about the past are gone. I am imagining the future, hoarding and relying upon particular objects I believe will help bring the future about, or make me better prepared for it, all based on pattern recognition ( memory) of the past. In theory I understood that the whole enterprise relied on the future being like the past. But this pandemic situation is theory turned big hairy undeniable reality. The world is different. Mundane shit I took for granted a few weeks ago is gone. It’s making me reevaluate everything I think is dependable. All the “facts” I take for granted.
It’s playing out in the littlest details of life … I thought the new makeup I bought before all this was so valuable, makeup has served me well in the past. But haha, how could I have possibly planned to be banned from seeing other people for weeks on end. Guess that makeup just took up space I could have used for toilet paper in my shopping cart. It’s playing out in the big stuff too… I tend to think of Eric as someone who protects me, that is a fundamental quality of a partner to me. But at the beginning of this thing, Eric was still going into work in Manhattan: He was doing the opposite of what I think a partner does, in this new world order, he was putting me at risk. It’s a daily barrage of shit I thought was true turning out to be totally different then what I thought.
All that, and the innate suffering of trying to rely on what is, by nature, not reliable, I’m pointing a finger at you here Amazon, but I am also pointing a finger at me: I peg my whole hope of Alana-the-identity on a physical construct, a body, that is subject to being consumed by viruses. The pandemic has a way of proving that if I am hoping to rely on this body, I am totally fucked.
