Supermoons and censorship

Photograph: Kevin Aloysius

Currently I seem to find analogies for the pandemic in everything - cleaning the house (wish I could order a dust lockdown dammit!), watching flying ants die in droves, watching the birds fight for seed at the bird feeder. This is probably a known psychological phenomenon like the five stages of grief. It slots right in for the five stages of pandemic-onium as stage five after denial, anger, fear, impotence, ubiquitous analogies... maybe followed by surrender... or complacency. But two nights ago I saw the supermoon and it really was beautiful and seemed disconnected from all that was going on. My analogy-making brain took a break.

By the way, 'supermoon' is not an astronomical term. It was actually coined by an astrologer in 1976 to describe when a full or new moon is at 90% of its closest distance to the Earth as it travels along an elliptical orbit. Choosing the 90% mark was just an arbitrary decision, nothing special or scientific about that point in the orbit. A 'supermoon' is very slightly closer to the Earth than at other times, but the 'super' is a misnomer - at that slightly decreased distance the moon only appears about 7% bigger than a regular full moon. As a lapsed astronomer, I'm happy with anything that gets people to look at the sky at night. But as a pedantic lapsed astronomer I despair at the use of the word supermoon. The correct astronomical term would be perigee syzygy. Use that in a sentence today!

While cutting ThingTwo's hair during the lunar perigee syzygy, she mused that it might be nice to have a shaved head. No brushing hair, no pony tails, no lice. I offered to do it, since I was struggling with following the latest YouTube hair cutting directions. But she declined... for now. What is it with these 'ten easy ways to cut hair' YouTube videos? I'm seriously beginning to think there is a conspiracy among hairdressers to purposefully put out misinformation. The latest effort looks ok so long as ThingTwo doesn't move her head. 

There is a thought that has been banging around in my head since I started writing this blog. Since the blog is vaguely public (I really should look into the various settings one of these days), how honest can I be? In particular, can I really say what I think about the current US administration? I think I may have gone as far in places to say just 'Trump' without the honorific President, which if you are as much of  a fan of the TV series The West Wing as I am, you will understand is a pretty risqué move.  

I think I am probably self-censoring quite a bit. In addition to just a natural reticence, I think this comes down to a couple of reasons.

First and always present is the fact of being an immigrant. I remember when we lived in the US before I was thinking of joining a march to protest the Iraq war. A friend told me I shouldn't take part in any kind of demonstration since immigrants do not have the same freedom of speech rights as US citizens. I didn't look into it at the time, and went along to the march anyway. It was a very LA experience - getting driven to Hollywood in someone's convertible, celebrities linking arms at the head of the march while paps snapped away, marching past the seedy tattoo parlours and strip joints of Hollywood Boulevard, posing in front of rows of motorcycle cops blocking off streets.

Since we came back to the US our immigration status has been in a constant state of flux as, for various reasons, we change from one visa to another. It leads to an odd feeling of insecurity because even though I think our case is pretty straightforward, I am very aware that somewhere in the labyrinthian US immigration system our various petitions are being vetted, including all social media accounts.

I just googled first amendment rights (freedom of speech, press, and right to peaceably assemble) and immigrants and found that while the constitution does not distinguish between citizens and aliens (as we are delightfully called here), there is Supreme Court ruling precedent that  means "resident aliens lack the same security in political expression extended to citizens." Aliens were deported in the 1900s for anarchy, the 1950's for being communists, and since the Patriot Act of 2001 aliens may be deported for fundraising for or associating with terrorist groups. 

Ok so I don't have any grandiose delusions - I know my ramblings here aren't exactly espousing sedition, or supporting dodgy groups. But what feels very strange and... menacing... about being an immigrant in the current US climate is that just a difference of opinion or any criticism seems to be seen as a threat by this White House. 

When I rooted around in Blogger - the site that runs this blog - I found a page that showed pageviews by country. I've only told a few people from Canada and the UK about this blog, but, bizarrely, there are a substantial number of hits from the US and Russia. I assume Internet bots, but in my paranoid state I think: the NSA, the FSB! 

Another thing going on right now specific to COVID-19 that perhaps limits what we all allow ourselves to say out loud (or write) - is that the situation is changing so fast. We flit between feeling a fascination with actually getting to experience this, to feeling guilty that things are so terrible in other places while we are relatively safe, to feeling actually scared.  I'd been thinking really awful thoughts, and even saying some of them, about Boris Johnson (my UK friend calls him BoJo) because I felt his stupid decisions early on in the UK crisis were putting our UK families at risk. But then BoJo goes and gets the virus and is admitted to hospital! Can't help but feel empathy for him and his pregnant partner.

Thinking about writing and censorship makes me think of my Grannie - Daphne Rooke. She was an author who grew up and lived in South Africa on and off until 1965. Her books were banned by the South African government during apartheid. In those days, having your books banned was the mark of any good South African writer. By 1964, more than 12,000 publications had been banned.  Books were actually burned - by librarians!  Books were banned for being indecent, blasphemous, ridiculing the regime, being 'harmful to the relationship between any sections of the inhabitants of the Republic', and being 'prejudicial to the safety of the State'. Since my lil' old Grannie's books included interracial rape and love affairs and were pretty racy in general, her books likely ticked off indecency and 'harming the relationship between sections of inhabitants' (i.e. the 'blacks' and 'whites'). She continued to write during apartheid in the fifties and early sixties but her books were published by publishers in the US and UK (and still are!) I'm not quite sure how the manuscripts got out of the country in the days before email. There is some story about how, in case of a police search, my grandfather devised a hiding place for Grannie's manuscripts - a brick in the wall that could be removed and the manuscripts shoved into the cavity. Eventually the police state became untenable and my grandparents moved to Australia in 1965, where she continued to write without fear. Her books were finally published in South Africa in 1987.

Salman Rushdie wrote a powerful piece 'On Censorship' in the New Yorker back in 2012. He said, "If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today. If he is afraid of the consequences of his choice of subject or of his manner of treatment of it, then his choices will not be determined by his talent, but by fear. If we are not confident of our freedom, then we are not free." 

I'm not claiming to be creating art or to seriously be at risk of deportation or anything dramatic like that! I think it is more that from my little taster of fear, I can only feel great admiration for the courage of those who defy restrictions and censorship. Back in late February I heard a story on This American Life called Mr Chen goes to Wuhan about Chen Qiushi, a Chinese lawyer who decided to go to Wuhan and make first-hand reports about the coronavirus epidemic. It is now becoming clear that, despite attempts by people such as Chen Qiushi, we have been receiving a heavily sanitized view of what is/was happening in Wuhan, and those who have tried to report the truth have been censored. Chen Qiushi has been missing since February 6. 

At the start of Salman Rushdie's essay on censorship he makes an analogy between air and liberty in order to show how freedom is essential to creativity.
"Consider, if you will, the air. Here it is, all around us, plentiful, freely available, and broadly breathable. And yes, I know, it’s not perfectly clean or perfectly pure, but here it nevertheless is, plenty of it, enough for all of us and lots to spare." As with freely available air, he argues, so with liberty, we take it for granted and this freedom and assumption of freedom allows for creativity. 

I now stumble reading these words about air and freedom - each day seems to bring new research findings about the airborne transmission of SARS Cov-2. 'Broadly breathable air' is becoming questionable, and we all have lost freedom of movement for the time being. What a strange phenomenon - the analogies of the past aren't working because some of the very basic things we used to take for granted have (hopefully momentarily) disappeared. My analogy-seeking brain is in overdrive - there must be some analogy for this breakdown of analogies?! 

Fortunately for you I can't think of one just now. 

-----Update: Funny - I completely forgot about regular mail and telegrams when wondering how my Grannie got her manuscripts to the England and the US!