Tag: coronavirus

This Quiet Life

The world is such a quiet place.

Not quite as quiet as April,

that was like life on the moon.

But the quietest late July

that is almost imaginable.

I had this thought inside the gym.

And I couldn’t be happier to be back inside a gym.

But it rather felt like somewhere

that has been rediscovered after a meteor strike.

No vibes, not much energy, certainly no sweaty high-fives.

Similar to newly spread out patios

and coffee shops where you feel like frogger

jumping on socially distanced standing markers.

I know that the birds and trees are still happy,

and hopefully those dolphins in Venice too.

But this quiet cloud of distance,

hovering longer than we expected,

is snuffing out our social tendencies.

Making seeing and talking to people

feel awkward and almost dangerous.

I’m ready to unspool from the cloister,

eat a pizza with strangers,

plan a trip further than I can drive,

accidentally bump someone’s elbow in the supermarket.

I guess that’ll all have to wait for a vaccine,

or so they say,

then we can get back to socializing

like any other ordinary and forgettable

Thursday in July.

One Hundred Something Days Later

We went to the mall today, because it’s possible.

I got oddly emotional browsing ties in one of my favourite shops: why would anyone need a tie? I properly choked up.

Dalia tried on a sandal without a sock and they took the pair away for immediate quarantine. Whatever exactly that entails.

I picked up two pants from the tailor, about four months late, having forgotten that they exist. Looking at the jeans realizing I haven’t worn any in about 100 days. And that I have about eight pairs.

The mall music made me feel like I was in a nightclub. A long ago pre-pre-covid memory for me. Life has become so silent, bird chirps and time ticking mostly.

Everything is weird.

It seems very important that we shop. That I spend. Like all that we’ve saved during this time never belonged to us in the first place. And should just be handed over. Tip the restaurant, tip the driver, tip the poor server double time – on the sad half re-opened sidewalk patio – to keep them smiling under the mask.

Buy spring and summer shirts even now that we’ve finally realized that we have too many already. Buy sweaters from last winter because stock needs to keep moving. Buy sweaters for next winter because we don’t know what’s coming.

The greatest civic duty seems to have become buying things. More than washing your hands, more than staying apart, maybe even more than saluting frontline workers, and the fallen, and the forgotten families of the fallen. Global salvation lies in consumption. More than before, more than ever. Buy online, buy in-store; buy it twice.

The world and the markets and their recoveries depend on us. The local economies and the international ones and everything in between. Rent cottages again, fly domestic, book international flights and hope that you can actually go anywhere. Because they need help everywhere.

We need smoke stacks spouting again. China producing knick-knacks again. Restaurants cooking for us again. Schools taking care of our kids again. Nature bending to our will again.

I am exactly the hypocrisy that I’m angry with. I’m fighting for both my sanity and my humanity – by going to the mall.

I gave in and bought new shorts. And then a sandwich at the bottega. And I might even add my name to the long list to sit on a patio and pay three times more for a beer than what I would to have it on my balcony. And soon I hope that this will all be normal again. Whatever exactly that means anymore.

Slow Sunny Days on the Inside

Watching beautiful sunny days pass by from the inside

Tracking the shape-shifting shadows slide slowly along the walls and floors

Seeing the sun kiss each leaf of every plant, uniquely at its own daily scheduled time

Stringing together meals like Christmas lights

From pang to idea to assessment to exploration to preparation to plate-setting to eating to cleaning to washing and back to waiting for the next tingle of hunger

Watching shows minute by minute, episode by episode, season by season

Puzzles piece by piece

Work type by type

Cleaning every nook, rediscovering every dusty book, refolding every wrinkled t-shirt

Counting all my socks, scrolling all my picture posts, reading all my blogs

Listening to all the tunes, lifting every weight, remembering every taken trip

Embedded, embraced, sometimes overwhelmed, by the slow, slow days of Covid-19

now well into 20

Doing what we can, in order to distract from all that we cannot

Like fly to Abuja, or drive to California, or share a hug

I’d give anything to elbow bump a colleague, or coach, or old friend

To have lunch with my folks and brother, linger over plates of noodles and pots of green tea,

like germs were still invisible

Plan a trip, book a cottage, try on new jeans

Remember when Tom Hanks got it? When the NBA cancelled the season? The Iranian Minister of Health?

Seems like a lifetime ago in Covid years. But it’s only been months. Dozens of weeks. Hundreds of days. Thousands of hours. Millions of minutes. Billions of seconds.

Since those simple normal outdoor times

Now it’s all bad quarantine haircuts, zoom meetings with one person unmuted (so their dog and kid as well), and live streams for an audience of three

At least, for once, we have each other,

and by that I mean everyone on Earth

Hunkered down, unsure, better or worse

Watching the sun pass by on the floor under our feet,

illuminating all that is found

on the inside.

An Open Letter to the Coronavirus

Dear Coronavirus, or COVID-19, or whatever it is you like to be called, or maybe more accurately, whatever it is we will spend the rest of our lives trying to forget you as.

You set off quietly, a silent bomb, in that market in that city and province, of tens of millions of souls, that no one had every heard of before.

And now here you are, in every maskless breath, every missed handshake, empty restaurant countertop, senior’s home nightmare, accelerating caseload curve.

We don’t quite know what to do, us normal people. Stay calm (inside) and carry on. Buy cans of beans we hope never to eat. Tell ourselves the same stories we tell to our kids.

You have revealed blue skies while the markets flash red. Grounded all flights and forced us to walk and to sit and to think and to reflect and to ponder and to feel and to slow down. To consider those we care for most and how to care for them best, in this moment, maybe in every moment.

You have somehow managed to unify humanity. In our frailty and helplessness; in our hopefulness and decency. You have made heroes of supermarket clerks and delivery drivers and gods of doctors, nurses and occasionally even bureaucrats.

I am the Italians. I am the Iranians. I am the first case in Zimbabwe. I am the last case in Paris. I am the asymptomatic untested masses. I am the drive-thru swabber. I am the accordion player on the balcony and the grandchild of the deceased.

I am doing squats in my living room and working from the dining room. Spending St. Patty’s Day in the kitchen and praying at night in bed. Sending my dad noodles and my mom whatsapp memes. Saving money and investing in time with my wife. I have a quarantine corner on my couch and limit my news consumption to 20 minutes a day, both for my mental health. I am trying my best to be ok while I know everyone else is trying the same.

I hope you leave even quicker than you came. Feel free to leave some of the good stuff behind and then never return. We were doing well before you, and I think that’s actually true. Now do what you’re gonna do and leave us with some of the lessons – and all of the compassion, clarity and ambition. And be on your way!