The Sickness Unto Death: Tom Hanks

The novel coronavirus (and why can't they just call it the new coronavirus?  Why call it novel, like it was created by Charles Dickens or Emile Zola??) has infected Tom Hanks. . .

Tom Hanks. . .of the privileged class.  

Tom Hanks. . .of the monarchy of celebrity.

Can you imagine his shock?  His utter and complete shock?

This is a man who has lived for decades in the parallel reality of the über leisure class.  The rough edges of the lumpen life have long since been smoothed away.

But a little molecule, tiny, electron microscopic, more than a 1000 times less than the width of a hair. . .this invisible biological agent infiltrated Tom Hanks.

One moment, Tom Hanks was living as deliciously as one can on this earth.  Then in the next moment, he felt just a little bit tired, had a little bit of a body ache. . .and, presto!, just like that, Tom Hanks is infected with a new reality.

It has to be hard for him to believe, to accept. . .

That a tiny molecule from some grubby oriental food stall was able to leapfrog the entire globe, and find Tom Hanks, find The Tom Hanks, and penetrate him, and then rape his healthy cells, leaving him pregnant with the viral offspring. . .an alien horde marching toward his lungs, leaving a cellular tidal wave of fluid and pus that may eventually drown his respiratory system and strip him of his privilege and leave him a corpse. . .

Tom Hanks had no way to see it coming. . .and now he must be sitting in quarantine dumbfounded it could all be over in two or three or four days.  

For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. . .

His mind has to be racing in existential dread, trying to reconcile his startling reversal of fortune. . .

Isolated, surrounded by strangers wearing masks and gloves, he has become an unclean thing that even the lowliest hospital janitor now lords it over him. . .

How can one come to grips with such a novel state?

Pity the man. . .




And then, much harder to pity, there is this: