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The gas was turned off in the middle of the night, on the coldest day of the year. There is a perfectly vague excuse from the government office, and even more vague predictions about when it will be turned back on. Of course, the next thing to say is that this could be seen as better than the electricity going off, better than the water going off. But none of this is good. This is how people spent the 90s here, and why so many left.

It is a long and tedious waiting game.

Fortunately, I bought some portable burners last summer, part of my plans to do pop-up food events in wine bars that have no real kitchen. I pull one of them from the box and make breakfast, with this idea that eating the same thing will normalize the day, as the wind whistles in the cracks in the windows, and the trees bend hard, and sirens churn past on the main street below us.

There are many survival mechanisms that kick into place, and we may not be able to choose them as much as they choose us. How to keep the lights on and the bills paid, while the world goes upside-down at your doorstep? How to keep your child in school, and do that homework? How to celebrate an anniversary or a birthday? It all runs towards getting small, and spending most of your time at home. Within these walls, there is a shrinking, private kingdom - a place that needs some fixing, a place that you can breathe in, even if the air is so cold like today, a place to sit at a table and pour some good wine, trying to carve out a little sanity before fighting the pillows.

There is a way to become invisible, a ghost that leaves no traces, that casts no shadow as it takes care of business. Keep that head down, tighten those lips, smile darn you, smile. Some have mastered this solution, and I see them literally skipping along the sidewalk. I don’t know how they do it, day in and out.

The days and weeks, now months are a harsh reminder of quarantine, of the fragile normalcy of life being upended, replaced with bare-knuckled essentials, no frills, no parties, no letting-off steam, just the bald and ugly truth spraypainted on every other wall. We are here, and something must change - and we wake up to more stagnation, more digging in, more deaf ears, more greed, more desperation.

We are here, and something must change.