Tag: COVID-19

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Life under quarantine

What, exactly, does it tell us? Several things:

  1. Even the simplest tasks are performed under a pervasive general strain on all of one’s faculties during this bizarre, sad, and maddening time.
  2. I am well enough, and my daughter is well enough, to undertake such simple, ostensibly heartening tasks.
  3. Somehow, we have an abundance of construction paper, but a dearth of the other kind (see below).
  4. I remain a perfectionist when it comes to many things, even under the shadow of a pandemic that, it would seem, might provide a welcome opportunity not to be SO. DAMN. ANAL.
  5. My daughter and I have creative differences.
  6. Our ability to reconcile these differences and complete the friggin’ rainbow has become an internalized metaphor for–and imagined predictor of–my own ability to get to the other side of this day, week, month, etc. in one piece.

As of right now, the rainbow remains… in progress. Will (try to) report back.

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There’s no place but home…

This is the album that got me through yesterday, courtesy of my dad’s old record collection. You would think that, having survived a year of something akin to self-quarantining during my recent cancer treatment, I’d be primed for this new normal. I’m not. A curious corollary of acute illness is the myopic focus it induces (something I wrote about in a previous post), but the current COVID-19 crisis has resulted in pain and anxiety that feel much more diffuse. I’ve wanted to write here again in an attempt to manage it, but finding the time, space, and energy has proven difficult while working and parenting from home. Here’s hoping that might change.