Sunday Still in Quarantine

We're in quarantine, but fortunately (unlike many, I'm so sorry to tell, who have lost their incomes) work goes on business as usual for both D. and I. So yes, Sunday is still a more treasured day off. 

I wake up an hour or two later than usual since there are no morning classes. D. and V. are already playing dolls, while practicing numbers and letters. The grocery delivery arrives and I pick it up at the street corner. We had pizza for lunch, the first time we ordered restaurant/fast food since we've been locked up. I take over playing with the dolls while D. gets another hour or two of sleep. V. and I try to practice a little bit of writing. I. help out I. with his PE homework, recording a video of himself stretching and exercising along with his preferred music. They both snack on tomatoes and piknik. D. and I sneak in an episode of Terrace House. 

D. prepares an early dinner. Tiger prawns bought online from direct sellers. Her cooking is absolutely better than restaurant food. We sit at the table, treasuring this togetherness. 

We play some more together, building Legos, laughing at memes, laughing with each other, along with inevitable embraces. 

I. does his math homework online, we practice our Katakana. They're asleep before 9pm. 

I go for a run 6km at the treadmill, virtually running around the Marina Bay Sands area in Singapore along with YouTube runner. It's pathetic, but it does the job and gets you in the zone. I was running in Waikiki Beach last night. I'll be running in Boracay tomorrow. 

D. wakes up to start her night shift, it's 8am in California. I shower, then take my time making coffee. Grinding Starbucks winter collection beans because our friends bought it on our behalf on a glorious bargain, using the French press again, pouring for me and D. 

The city imposed a liquor ban, so coffee will have to do in these quarantined evenings. It will try, it will work your imagination, because one of the things you'll miss most when you're in isolation, is sitting in a coffee shop (still in isolation). There are better things though. Nights like these. Sipping coffee while reading a book, listening to NPR tiny desk concerts at an ikea kindergarten table and chair at the edge of the bed, watching the children sleep with so much peace, allowing myself, recklessly, to forget that the world is dying. 

Quarantine Days in a Lonely City

The Lonely City

Adeventures in the art of being alone

Olivia Laing

The current, unfortunate situation suits this book as half the world is locked out in isolation. The latest figures - 1,224,894 infected with COVID-19 with 66,497 deaths. There will be more, my heart crumbles. Our days in isolation will drag on. So this book was deeply relatable, as it renders the sadness as extremely real. Even more emphasized, perhaps, because I was reading and listening in screens. I read it in an ebook and listened to it thorough the Audible app. "Tethered to our devices, leery of real contact, how we are heading for a crisis of intimacy, as our ability to socialize withers and atrophies."

These days we have "virtual hangouts" in video conference apps, zoom 飲み会, e-numan. Loneliness here is a longing not just for acceptance, but also for integration. 

It's as if the book was written not only about a city that epitomized solitude, but as a preamble for all the cities and entire countries that's been locked out or quarantined. The back-firing isolation that the internet brought, previous pandemics and diseases such as AIDS, SARS, were all soft-openings and warms ups to this virus and future iterations that will emerge.

It's fascinating how with all the grimness and  loneliness, there were bright souls who channeled it to a comforting creativity. The books re-acquaints me with Andy Warhol. It introduces me to Edward Hopper, who's popularity, incidentally, resurfaced in this these days of isolation. There is a redemptive quality in reading about loneliness that turns into art.

One of the biggest gems I discovered in this book, Henry Darger. A Chicago janitor who posthumously achieved fame as one of the world's most celebrated 'outsider' artists. How many more isolated and Vivian Maiers and Henry Dargers are in the world, their works hidden treasures in attics.

What good fortune it is, what privilege, to be merely distracting (if not amusing) myself with reading in an ebook (listening to a smartphone audio book) at the same time, in a world that is locked out, its people dying dying. What replaces loneliness, but an overwhelming sense of guilt and powerlessness, until loneliness returns, reinforced, as it will even when the cities re-open, as if it has never left at all.