Playing with Style

The Book of Swine and Illness
Kundera Style Public Announcement

The Greek word for “suffering” is Algos. The mutating strain that is Swine flu causes human suffering. The flu season, a constant in our autumn lives, the repetition in the yearly cycle, it comes again with new worries. It is a yearly kitsch of fear that invades our lives. The mother worries for her children; the son for the health of his elderly mother, the fear of loss permeates daily existence. The flu comes again and always it is different. Germans are familiar with it, Mexicans feel it, and the Americans with their health care longings suffer through it. In each language “fear” has a different semantic nuance. In Catalan enyorar is derived from the Latin word ignorare (be unaware of, not know, not experience; to lack or miss). Ignorance, this familiar way of being, they know is not easily corrected state. Should they trust the regime, with its propaganda and its collaboration with pharmaceutical companies, or the chicken littles that are spreading fear across the Internet? Should they choose to vaccinate their fragile loved ones and take a risk, of possibly living through a repeat of the 1978 swine flu fiasco in America? In that light the fear is contagious more than the flu, the kitsch that grips the masses.