I am mired in the National Park of Envy. It is only a small garden park among the great national parks of emotion and it is very crowded. Everyone wanting. Me, wanting. All around are green things—bushes and leaves and moss in the wet areas. I slosh through them, creating footfalls and faint sounds. I get covered in muck. I want more. I want. I want the rainbow—the colours that will move me along the moody paths. I want the tunnel, gaping, lit, alluring in that rainbow, calling me from envy. I have. That is the conundrum: the have. In this quarantine-time haves are significant—a husband or friend, my sons and their children, other friends, ready and responsive and loving. Haves like a computer, a cell phone, a smart TV. Haves like a terrace, a great apartment, plants, food, books, subscriptions to the New York Times and Netflix. Haves like projects to finish. Haves like the colors each evening that promise another morning.
But there are the things I have not, and they are bigger than me. I want what those others must have—the yard, the pool, the live-in child, the guarantee that I will be around to want more. I envy those who have confidence that they will get through this; who gallivant—masked, yes, but still go without fear into the colourful tunnel. I envy. I envy. In the distance, maybe there is the pathway out. I also wait.
Judith Veder, 77
Bronx, NY
This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.