thoughts // personal life in time of covid-19

Stage 1/ The Worried Shoes

It came in stages. First the panic-buying— figuring out the balance between having enough but not getting into the hoarding line: hand sanitizer, dry food, supplies of supplements, and immune boosters.  Then comes the strategic planning. Distributing the eggs in different baskets, making escape plans and standard operating procedures for every scenarios of the mundane daily life and of the worst. Then comes the anxiety. The what ifs. The overthinking. The moment I realize I ran out of wine, and dark chocolate, and anything else that can keep me off edges. Except for hugs. I’m lucky I have ample of that and the morning sun on a leisurely morning. Still, there are days of waking up in despair. And oh, the voids. Giving up to its lure is easy. To spiral down deep and stay in the dark for few days. The void is composed of miles and miles of thoughts where I can dive deep; and of dark corners where fear is the quicksand; or choose to stop and listen one by one, thoughts after thoughts—while crawling all the way back up. Dito was always there. Gently stroking my hair, scratching my back, keeping me sane. That was the moment when, for the first time in my life, I wanted to watch whatever horror movies I can find. Anything can’t be more terrifying than real life. I remember someone said at the beginning of it all, few days before they call it a pandemic: “It’s a curious time. We live in a science fiction movie”. At this stage, I dream of the most ordinary day when I can take a break from being concerned, to live the daily life without fear, and take off my worried shoes. 

Stage 2/ The Collective Grief

One day I learn its name and call it correctly. It was grief. It has always been grief all along in many different forms. A wave of collective grief. The magnitude and intensity of the crisis pulled me down like a gravity, yet, what gave it a face was more personal than that. I remember few months before, feeling helpless and hapless being sick in New York with a new-found knowledge that all those platinum membership of all insurances that we have won’t do any good in a country of such a bizarre system. I remember how my heart sank when I found Dito was having the same fever that I had the day before and how relieved I was when we both recovered a week before heading back home. I remember feeling that pang of grief again knowing my uncle was ill half the world away in one of the epicenter of the crisis, unable to see the doctor because the health system there is already overwhelmed. Although in Madrid, the city where he lives, the healthcare system is so much more humane and a doctor is checking up on him every day during his quarantine. I don’t dare to think of the country where I am now with a healthcare system slowly collapsing even before it reaches the peak. The potentiality of any type of grief left me petrified—a deer in the headlights. I don’t know yet whether or not to be scared of dying—but I know I am scared of the possibilities of losing people I care about. When my uncle recovered from the virus, he told us how his worst nightmare was the probability of disappearing—having an ambulance picking him up and off he go to the unknown with 50:50 chance of coming back home or disappear, never to be seen again. That feeling-- having my heart sinking to my stomach when I think of it, is grief. 

Stage 3/ The Nostalgia

And then comes the next stage: the nostalgia. Triggered by a bleak realization that the last trip I did in February, could be the last one before a long pause ahead. Also: an even bleaker thought, I feel like my days are numbered. If the crisis remain unsolved, any attempt to lock ourselves down from everybody is an active attempt to buy some time. So I start making promises. Promises are the thread of hopes to hold on to: visit friends’ newborns, eat crustaceans with uncle in Spain, take him to that super spicy fish place in Borobudur in return, finally go to King’s day with Go Eun, and one day—I will finally start a perfume collection. It has always been my obsession to create a library of memories of all the places I went to through smell. How orange blossom and bubble bath reminds me of Torino, how Amsterdam is the first Magnolia bloom, how Napoli is the smell of fresh linen and laundries, how Budapest is the smell of roasted chestnut and peppermint wind, and how New York is made of candied almond and dried leaves. Dito and I finally made that photobook of the places we went together that his father has been asking for. It made me happy but at times when I am not at my best shape, I feel like the places where I went on my own was not part of my life. As if it was swept under the rugs and never happen. Will I be able to remember things beyond the picture? Will I remember it better when I finally put it all into words? Finally write about that time when I sabotaged one of my dream because the circumstances was not ideal, that other time when two police woman who do not speak English at all caught us accidentally riding a tram without validating the ticket, and a panic moment in the airport caused by a bomb threat soothed by a big portion of KFC. 

Stage 4/ Sculptural Immobility 

The virus triggered this idea about sculptural immobility. It was as if you are cursed: wherever you last standing and with whom you chose to spend your time with—those are the life that you will live until an unforeseeable future. Your decision is set in stone. Those who are apart can no longer touch again. The far is far again. The world is round again. And time is long again. It feels as if we are collectively took an early retirement. The feeling is very much present at home (despite all the projects we are working on right now). If this home is going to be our universe for the next few months or few years to come—we need to fully commit to it and make the most of it. Usually, there is a feeling of temporality in the house—as if it is just a transit in-between trips. It is now finally time to clean the messy backyard, deep clean our windows, fix the broken kitchen shelf and change the lightbulb. It is now finally time to reevaluate our relationship with the home. We realized how our home changed the way we do. In 2015, we took down most of the artworks on the wall because we want to rest from visual stimulation at home. We don’t decorate it so much and focusing on keeping things practical and functional. The house now accommodate new social functions, unnecessary clutters are regularly thrown away, and it evolves the way we do. It can be messy at times but that's ok. We keep most books from Lir, from my childhood, from trips we went; but we let it scattered around different rooms (except bedroom). Since we don’t have the Space at the city anymore, our home that used to be the escape plan from work now turn into a workspace, making us constantly draw the psychological line between life and work. It is not as hard as it sounds and the workspace is not as empty as we want it to be but as long as we have blank spaces on the table, on the floor, or in my case: on the bed—we’re good. When it is time for 900mdpl, the life at home would suddenly being put on a higher speed. The house would be lively, people would take over my workspace and the fire in the kitchen would never stop burning. I would cook so much for everybody and I would reach my limit of social interaction every now and then; the people I work with would then helping me to protect my personal space that would feel so precious. Now that the house is empty, it became a universe of two. I sometime miss having people around no matter how drained I would feel afterward. We have 9 pet rabbits, but they live in the backyard and they are relatively quiet. Now the silence is so thick we could almost hear them! Every texture of the rain drops, every birds, every footsteps approaching, the wind, the tree, the neighbors fixing their roof, the roosters, the other ‘pet’ living at our ceiling (a Javanese ferret-badger). 

Stage 5/ The Search for Meaning

It’s ironic when I finally come to realize that the things I used to wish for are actually coming true. I used to wish I could have more quality time to be with my mom and Dito, and now I have plenty. I wanted to go to a place where time is irrelevant and I yearned for slowness—a moment to just search for meaning, to have unlimited time to just read, and write, and fully love, and to just be. To be fully present without an endless to-do list, grounded and not having to go to the next destination, without having to prepare for the next audition. Suddenly, time is all we have. Now it feels like time dissolves and days bleed into one another. Suddenly, I am in a place where time is irrelevant. Once I crawled back up from the deep dark cold void, I learn to embrace the abundance of time. I demand for the love that I deserve—plenty of it. In exchange, I love with all my heart. There are days when I feel warm inside and motivated enough to put on a pretty dress. It is easy to feel lightness and warmth on a sun-drenched house with mild microclimate that always feel like spring. As I continuously examine the quality of my life, everything went down to the essential. I realize I enjoy the home cooking so much and that the only thing I miss about eating at a restaurant is the anonymity and the idea of eating out. I realize I don’t need too much of anything to lead a wholesome life. (Although I  really miss the spa and having face acupressure done professionally). I learn to travel in place, cooking food that reminds me of places far away, and finally reconnect with my surrounding. At times, I ask myself: have I lived enough? Have I tasted enough? If this is the end, will I crave for more? Under what conditions and in which way would life be worth living? Everyday I would crave for a beautiful mind telling me things I don’t know. I want to feel alive. I want solidarity and riot and strike on how the world works. I want to be sure that nobody in my neighborhood is hungry. I want sovereignty for the people. Free from the control of capitalism, starting from the small circle of a family, neighbors, community. The crisis has got us questioning the system in general and it is reassuring to be part of a closely-knitted community and re-learn how to be together as neighbors and citizen of the world: a collective movement even without proximity. Hopefully, when we get to the other side of it, the world after the great mutation would require us to live more sustainably. While the virus is still learning about itself and continuously morphing—so is the world. 

Stage 6/ Embracing Slowness

We are now taking it slow. We are following the rhythm of the day, observing the lyrical environment, and embrace the weird moment when the world is being put into collective pause. Instead of a to-do list, I try to remember things that I enjoy doing when I am away: the walk, the newness of everyday life, the consciousness of things around me. I read. I write. I eat better, sleep better, exercise better. I evaluate the quality of life I am living, of all the friendships I have, and of the system of the world. Dito and I learn how to be self-sufficient, mindful, and dig down those forgotten skills we learned in school: how to start a medicinal herb garden, building things from scratch, and foraging among others. When I was younger, I used to dream of having a potager—an aromatic French kitchen garden and medicinal herb at the backyard with rabbits running around. The later are there, the potager is still just a dream. But I used to dream of a small white house with lots of windows to let the sun shine in. I dreamt of comfortable reading nooks and books everywhere I move through the house. Only now have I realized it is the childhood dreams that I am living in right now. When we get out of this, it is time to reevaluate the dreams and create new ones as an adult (and to finally live somewhere far away, maybe?) We still follow the movement of the sun through the house and soak the morning sun at our kitchen table over breakfast—but instead of work, we are catching up with whatever weird vivid dream we had the night before. Last night, I dreamt about a zombie attack, targeting on people with low ph. level. I was the only one in the neighborhood with a low ph level so they put me in a glass house. It was raining when the zombie attacked—it rained acid and people are safe outside under the rain. The rain won’t help me no matter how acid it was because my blood is anyhow non-acidic and the zombie can smell it. So I look outside at the people guarding the glass house and I catch my friend’s eyes, inaudibly saying ‘I got your back’ and my friend start talking to the zombie to distract it from me and then my friend turned into a box of square cheese ransacked by the zombie before it went away. I was spared.