Lessons From Long COVID: Juliet Monireh’s Comic on Slowing Down, Healing, and Moving Through the World at Half-Speed | A Prism Essay on Chronic Illness, Rest, and Recovery

Hi everyone,

It’s Thanksgiving weekend, which means many of us are full of turkey / tofurkey / gripes about settler colonialism! Of course, the true value of this holiday is less the tryptophan hangover / rubbery texture / whitewashing of history, and more the ritual of slowing down and noticing what we’re thankful for.

In this week’s essay, Juliet Monireh goes deeper into the benefits of dialing it back — no easy feat in a world that seems to be rapidly accelerating towards…mmmnevermind, we’re sure it’ll all be fine. 😬 In the meantime, did we mention this week’s essay is a gorgeous comic? Our advice: don’t rush through the lush images. It’s a quick read, but a slow burn.

Thankful for y’all,

THE PRISM TEAM

Youth, interrupted.

Ready to dabble in deceleration? Here are some other ways to get in touch with your inner slowpoke — no debilitating chronic illness required.

For some slow listening, try avant garde composer John Cage’s Organ2 / ASLSP (As Slow as Possible). The slowest version yet is currently being performed by The John Cage Organ Foundation in Halberstadt, Germany — and by “currently,” we mean it started in 2001 with 17 months of silence and will wrap up in 2640, with the next note due in August ‘26. (Need a quick break from slow sound? Try Cage’s 4’33”, wink wink.)

You could also try slow looking, a practice of deliberately lingering over a work of art (for longer than the 8 seconds average museumgoers take to get their eyesful). If you’re in between trips to the museum, this series is a great place to start. Really, you can slow-look at pretty much anything — it’s all about being intentional with your attention.

Need some low-speed company? Keep an eye out for the banana slug, one of the slowest animals on earth (and apparently the official state slug of California since 2024, who knew). We don’t want to rob the banana slug of its mantles (har har, that was a slug pun), but we do wonder about the ranking system for those “slowest” animals. Maybe the banana slug rejects hustle culture. Maybe it just doesn’t like to hurry. Maybe it was inspired by Juliet’s comic, too.