30. Time Capsule
Is the time capsule truly for the future, or are we making it for our present selves? Are we trying to shore up memories—inking indelibly what we hope we’ll remember but fear we’ll forget?
Here we are, Day 30, and the only thing I can think is: This whole thing has been astounding.
We have more than 80,000 people from all over the world participating in The Isolation Journals, and what a privilege it’s been to witness the power that so many small creative acts can have. By popular demand, tomorrow we’ll be kicking off a new month and a new theme for our daily creative practice.
A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed for an MIT Technology Review article about the race to save the first draft of this pandemic for posterity. There’s endless content out there, but the problem that historians face is that so much of how we communicate is digital—and altering one line of code can change it, even make it disappear. For those of you who ever used MySpace as a repository of self, the idea of this kind of erasure might’ve just sent a little shiver of horror down your spine. (Or in my case, of relief—I’m ecstatic that my use of heavy eye-liner and overplucked brows have been lost to time.)
Reflecting on this brought me back to elementary school, where every year it seemed like they were announcing some significant date and with it the plan to build a time capsule. (Remember Y2K?!) If I had to make one for my quarantine to date, it would include a recipe of my favorite new dish: thyme-infused, olive-oil braised chickpeas with capers and feta. Also: countless empty boxes of that deliciously toasty cinnamon cereal that will henceforth go unnamed, at least until they give me a free lifetime supply.
I’d put in the chore chart that my brother Adam—fourth grade teacher that he is—designed for our little commune, which we kept altering week by week, as we realized what our strong suits were—and were not. (Jon, if you’re reading this, you’ve been banned from using a broom). There’d be a large bottle of Clorox water. (I fear my hands will forever smell like bleach.) There would be a couple of homemade facemasks, handsewn and mailed to us by my friend Carmen’s mom in Texas. (Thank you, Mrs. Radley!)
I’d also include a special heating pad designed for neck pain—a sign of my inability to develop proper work-life balance, always a challenge but now especially—and a pair of sweatpants from my daily rotation.
And of course: A crisp, colorfully bound journal, and a deliciously inky gel pen.
But maybe there are bigger questions to ask about time capsules. Why do we reach for ephemera? A newspaper clipping, an old ticket stub—what do we think those things will reveal? Is the time capsule truly for the future, or are we making it for our present selves? Are we trying to shore up memories—inking indelibly what we hope we’ll remember but fear we’ll forget?
Prompt:
Create a time capsule of the past month. What has this time meant for you? Write about the things you thought about and the things you ate. Write about how your world has stayed the same and also how it’s changed. Write about what you struggled with and maybe would honestly rather forget. Write about where you found delight; the things you fear will fade and want to immortalize for yourself now and for the future you.
Further reading for inspiration:
Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
“A Letter to My Nephew” by James Baldwin
Anne Francey
Location: Saratoga Springs, NY
About: I am a visual artist. Besides writing daily from the Isolation Journals prompts, I also made a small gouache on paper a day, inspired by a landscape or a view from my window, with calligraphic lines morphing into words into things into spaces into scribbles. My rule was that it had to be done in a day, no reworking afterward. But sometimes I would cheat and rework it the next day. Of course!
Age: 64
Heather Viviano
Location: Seattle, WA
About: I placed in my time capsule a poem of my isolation days, my new routine, including my journaling time. I wanted to remember the rhythm of the days I spent at home during the "stay at home" order.
Age: 51
Restless night, awake at dawn
I reach and turn my cellphone on
In my mind I always say
"And what shall be my prompt today?"
Clean up Miri, give her food
Molly meows, she's in a mood
Birds are awake, singing their tunes
Check on bunny, feed him too
Coffee made, journal in hand
Into my chair I softly land
Write it all out, read some too
Time to move on, there's lots to do
Breakfast is made, dishes done
Out for a walk, hoping for sun
Home again, another task
Take mom a meal, wearing a mask
Maybe the store? Maybe mow?
There's lots of things to do, ya know
Wash the clothes, clean up the scene
Try not to think of Covid-19
Hang with the kids, playing a game
Sometimes the days feel all the same
Wipe it all down, doorknobs too
Check on entries, read something new
Dinner done, do what we choose
Read all the mail, check on the news
Bless the Frontlines, bless the dead
I wish I'd read a book instead
Wash your face, clean off the day
I wonder what my dad would say
He would surely ease my mind
And help me through this troubled time
Where's the answer, when's the end?
At least I have my journal friends
Drift off to sleep, wondering
Just what tomorrow's prompt will bring
Jami Miller
Location: Capistrano Beach, CA
About: Before COVID-19 I was living in El Paso, Tx and volunteering full-time at a migrant shelter. When the gravity of the situation sunk in, I decided to move back home to California in order to shelter in place. This journal entry was the first time I sat down and wrote during isolation - the first time I reflected on my situation and confronted how I felt.
Age: 24
Time, Uncorked
Has it been a month, already? The measurement doesn’t seem to fit. It’s both too long and too short. Can time oscillate? Is it allowed to do that? The last definitive event I can remember is moving back to California. It felt like I was ripped away from my life in El Paso – no goodbyes. I decided I needed to leave the migrant shelter I was living and volunteering at, due to COVID-19 and my underlying health condition, and the next day I was gone. You don’t stick around to the end of week when you’ve made that kind of decision. Everyone understood, but I’m still a seemingly healthy, young person leaving prematurely – bailing on a commitment. At first I felt guilty, but now I know it was the right decision. The easy choice would have been to stay.
Now I feel lost, like I’m floating. I imagine it’s how astronauts feel in space, except without the awe and wonder – just suspended. What’s up is down. What was once normal behavior, is now life threatening. It’s a time for all of us, as individuals and as a society, to redefine our values, our behaviors, and our expectations. We need to adapt in order to find some semblance of stability. I imagine it won’t be a smooth transition. There will definitely be some resistance, and honestly, I wouldn’t expect anything less. If the climate change debate has taught us anything about human behavior, it’s that acceptance is hard even if all the facts are laid out. How can something invisible leave so much carnage? How can human beings not be the biggest thing out there? But more to the point, why should I change my way of life? This hubris will get the best of us, unless we take this time to ground ourselves and move forward with patience and compassion.
Today, I am reflecting on my month in isolation, and it’s hardly fair to describe it in those terms. Days certainly don’t exist anymore. I have no routine, no reason to measure time. No hour is too late. When I wake up I go through a list of potential activities: search for jobs, read, draw, exercise, eat, etc. It’s the same list every day. Sure, maybe I’ll think of something new, but in the end I’m faced with the fact that I’m not going anywhere. No one is. I do find some solace in the fact that I’m not alone. The world is suffering. When looking at my situation from that perspective, I come back to myself. I am extremely fortunate. I have parents to fall back on, a roof over my head and food on the table. Ultimately, that is all I need.
People say this virus is the great equalizer, but that just isn’t true. The poor, especially Black and brown communities, are being hit the hardest. Amid all the turmoil, we can’t forget about the people we failed. The refugees crammed into detention cells, mistreated, scared, without proper care. The inmates at Riker’s Island, and around the world, who are no longer imprisoned but confined to a mass grave. The homeless, who were cast out of society long before this pandemic, have become exponentially more vulnerable. And, older folks whose lives have been treated as though they are expendable. This virus has starkly revealed the extent for which marginalized populations are rejected. With that in mind, the least I can do is stay inside, and not worry about the time.
Kelly Matula
Location: Ann Arbor, MI, USA
About: I am a healthcare researcher and writer living with multiple disabilities and chronic illnesses. For this entry, we were asked to look back over the first month of the project, during which I had been pretty much completely alone with a few exceptions, as detailed in the entry.
Age: 33
What would go in my time capsule of this month? I don’t even really remember exactly what was going on for me on April 1, but I think that was when it really started to hit that this wouldn’t be over soon, that in particular I would be very alone for Easter. I was still pretty deep in a rut, then, as I had only a couple of regular work calls in weeks, was spending a lot of time doing things that could (and lots that couldn’t) qualify as work but weren’t really advancing current projects, because old projects were mostly on hold (with clinician colleagues having COVID stuff to do) and coming up with new projects required thinking about COVID in a way that the anxiety factory in between my ears couldn’t really handle yet, being worried about so many people (especially Dad) and so many unknowns.
So I did other things like background reading and self-paced learning (special shout out to Crash Course’s Anatomy and Physiology course, hosted by Hank Green, which I was finishing up at the beginning of April, having flown through Biology and Chemistry in the first few weeks of my quarantine in March. Getting some of the medical-science background that will help me as a non-clinician in doing medical research and hopefully one day clinical ethics.
So I was kind of a mess then, isolated, sleeping at weird hours, staring at a computer or phone most of the time. What started to turn it around, I think, started with those formerly-pesky, now more complicated, wind chimes again. They’re on my downstairs neighbor’s front walk, which is right below my bedroom window. I had previously been neutral on wind chimes, but after months of living here and having them intruding into sleep and work, I had really begun to hate them. But then A [coworker who lives nearby] brought B [her son] over by my balcony on a walk and he loved them, and his desire to see them again has kept me in every-few-days in-person company (even if I’m half-yelling from a balcony like some weird Juliet whose Romeo is an 18 month old) ever since, which has been a godsend, as I live alone, am not really temperamentally cut out to do so, and because of health issues have to stay extra isolated. So this object I had begun to hate (and sort of taken delight in hating, because it became a thing to joke or complain about with colleagues, family, and others) has actually brought me such a lifeline. I still find the actual tones of the chimes themselves unpleasant—especially if I have a migraine—but I’m also grateful to have the connection through them. So it’s sort of a gradually-becoming-less-grudging “Thanks, you stupid wind chimes.” An extremely concrete lesson in good things coming from something unpleasant. It’s like I have this weird microcosm of this whole situation crafted into a physical object and constantly dinging at me like, “Hey, remember, good can come of bothersome things.” All right, heavy-handed metal Lesson of Quarantine. I guess I have to be grateful for your sonically-obnoxious reminders, huh? Why do you have to be so on the nose, God? I guess if I were a better listener metaphorical resonances wouldn’t need to become literally-resonant objects. But God uses whatever means available to speak to us, however insistently we need to be spoken to. So I guess the stupid wind chimes should go in my time capsule.
When I did see A (brought by the wind chimes) she revealed that C [another colleague] had been asking after me and offered help (specifically, to get groceries for me). I was blown away by that, especially given how busy he is (very involved in coordinating pandemic response, and single-dad-ing two young kids too), that he doesn’t live close by, and that we don’t know each other particularly well. It sort of boggles my mind, and chokes me up a bit, that someone with so much on their plate already would go that out of their way to be helpful. I mean, other people have offered or provided help, but they’ve been people I knew better already, without kids at home or nearly C’s workload, who live way closer. This just seemed so above-and-beyond. So unlike my previous model of how asking for help worked—in which I always had to be careful to minimize inconvenience, offer some very concrete sort of repayment or help in return, and be prepared for people to drop away as demands became too much.
It took me a while to actually reach out to C after A passed on his offer—and it’s taken us even longer to coordinate him actually helping me, but he should be bringing me groceries in the morning—but the experience has been one of the impetuses behind some major realizations (many captured in earlier entries): about my need to get over the conviction that people are always mad at me or one last inconvenience from deciding I’m too much of a burden to employ or be friends with or what have you; about the fact that even though as a disabled person I have had to ask for help a lot, I have actually often done it badly because of these warped ideas about it; a growing commitment in these days to learn to ask for help more often and better. I actually was still very tempted to get groceries in some other (though more work for me) way, but I realized that at least this once I need to let C help me, to let this person that’s so radically changed my vision of what help means (offering what I’d previously only considered realistic to expect from family or like a best friend, and maybe not even then given that everyone is so stretched thin now) follow through on helping me, to really cement the lesson.
There have been other lessons in quarantine too, like that people are very responsive to me when I reach out, and that the fact that the person you reached out to didn’t necessarily reach out to you first or unprompted doesn’t mean they, like, hate you—the recordings of C.S. Lewis’s “The Four Loves” lectures that D and I listened to (converted from cassette tapes; talk about a time capsule!) would go in the time capsule for that. And on the importance of routine and of taking time for prayer (throw in my breviary, which I’m finally using regularly, for those). Hopefully these lessons will stick with me and can be built on so that I can get back out into the world when the time comes with some improvements to the way I live. Bug fixes, let’s say.
A couple more things in the capsule. My “Easter bucket” that Mom sent. The journal (and extra paper tucked in back for this entry) that I’ve been using for this project, of course. Some Crash Course videos. One of the mint frozen yogurt pops that E (the last friend who brought groceries) gave me. A picture of the big legal envelope in which I sent the paperwork to finalize the sale of the condo I lived in for eight years in Pittsburgh—selling a home during the pandemic was weird, but at least I didn’t have to move during it. Bittersweet to finally close that chapter of my life too, but after not living there for a year already it’s good to be done. And I could maybe think of some other things but it’s getting late. I’ll take the ringing of the wind chimes now as a sign to wrap this up. Good night, you stupid wind chimes. But I mean the thank you.
Michelle LeBrun
Location: Providence, RI, USA
About: I am a filmmaker and educator in Providence RI. As is often the case in life, the stripping away of all that I thought was important, while painful, is leading to deeper wisdom. I think. (LOL)
Age: 62
This is actually month 5 of the pandemic and it shows no sign of letting up. The south and west are seeing upwards of 10,000 cases a day between them. The president and his minions still think it is all a hoax to varying degrees. The depth of crazy in this country is hard to put into words. Stubborn unwillingness to wear a mask wreaks havoc on the body personal and the body politic.
For me this time, this 5 months, has been many things so far and is certainly still in process. The first month was met with hyper vigilance. I became acutely aware of every surface I was touching and then what I was touching after. I wore plastic gloves whenever I went out of the house. I wondered how many hands had touched every item I put in my shopping cart at the store, wondering how long it had been there, whether Covid had died on it yet. I never went to the extent of buying a plastic shield for my face but early on I bought a packet of the blue and white hospital masks. I soon felt guilty for having them as PPE was so scarce. I offered them to a nurse friend at a local hospital but he said they couldn’t take them because the bag was already open. I continue to use them. When it is 90 degrees and humid outside, it is easier to breathe with them than with the colourful, double layered cotton masks friends have made. Each one of the neighbourhood cotton masks comes with a pouch to put a coffee filter in creating even more protection, we thought, we hope. At this point, it looks like they will again be useful in the fall and winter as the virus and the divided body politic show no signs of abating. Also in March, the visiting scholar that I had worked to bring to my university to lecture on his work in documentary film and geography, had to cancel his trip from France. The borders were closed. The borders are now closed in the opposite direction for Americans to go to Europe. They don’t want our ever expanding Covid crazy on their soil. I don’t blame them. By the end of the month of March, my French colleague who had been cancelled also then informed me that my trip there in May would also be cancelled. He and I had been working for two years putting together this package of trips back and forth that would engender new partnerships for our respective universities as well as a trip to the Isle of Jersey with his students to create short documentaries on the language Jèrriais, spoken only there. It was all cancelled. I had also won an artist in residency for the month of June on the Isle of Jersey, after our shoot with students, to interview Le Bruns I Have Not Known for a new documentary project of my own. My ancestors, Le Bruns, come from the Isle of Jersey. Le Bruns I’ve never met were excited to meet me and be part of my project and I was ecstatic to meet them! It all evaporated.
1
In the first several months I continued to wipe down with bleach everything that came into the house. Products would sit in various corners of the house awaiting their 3 days of sitting, waiting for any Covid to die, waiting to be used. Any product whose package could come off immediately and be thrown away, was. I stopped eating salad. Images of all the hands that would have touched the leaves of green before getting to my mouth stopped me from even considering salad. But now, in July, my garden is bursting with bounty! Green and red lettuce leaves ready for each evening’s dinner. Peppers crisp and tart with a hint of deep sweet. Tomatoes are not in yet but are forming. There will be Black Krim and Beef Steak tomatoes. Store bought never has as much flavour as fresh grown. Yellow beans, green beans, onions, arugula, raspberries, all ripe and ready. Tops can be snipped off of onions even though onions are not ready, have not reached their full plump posture. Clipping off their chive like tops for cooking helps the onions get fatter. A few orange sun flowers and white Zinnias are popping up into full bloom ready to be cut for bringing garden joy inside the house. The garden has been a saviour in this time of lockdown.
In April, my 2nd floor tenants, just under me, informed me through text that they were very sick and pretty certain they had Covid-19. I live in a large 1892 Victorian that I rehabbed 15 years ago and I live on the 3rd floor renting the other 2 floors under me. The 2nd floor is rented to visiting scholars who often tend to be from outside the U.S. These were from England via California. We made plans for them to only use the front entrance except on laundry days and I then went behind them wiping down banisters and door handles with bleach. Bleach has become my best friend. My cat loves the smell. A brief Googling taught me that for some cats, bleach excites their pheromones. I offered assistance every day of the week to the tenants but they preferred to just keep to themselves and continue to order everything online. I’m pretty sure they caught it from packages as they never went out. They were much better in a couple of weeks but bone- deep exhaustion stayed with them for weeks after.
In May, I began to think that it might be my destiny is to commit suicide. That maybe in my suicide there would be an awakening for someone else. The month of May was when I was meant to be in France working with students to shoot short documentaries. Instead, I was home thinking daily, almost all day, about buying a gun, about suicide. Not in any dramatic way, but very matter of factly. At my age, with no kids and no partner, what is there really to live for? I asked myself. Maybe in my death I would contribute more than in my living? I thought about getting the gun, driving to Lincoln Woods, having left a note at the house that my tenants would find so that the cats would be fed. The note would simply say where in Lincoln Woods the police could find my bloody shot body. I have spent much of the past couple of years getting my affairs in order so, I don’t feel as if I would have left anything undone or sloppy behind, except the bloody body, of course.
In June, my heart started to settle, let go, relax into just Being and having it be Ok that I just Am. Nothing to produce. Nothing to teach. Nothing to do but work in the garden. Even through the time of suicide rumination, I was still getting the garden ready to plant. I have no idea why the internalized rage in my heart subsided.
2
In some forms of Buddhism there exists the notion of hope and fear as primary drivers of the human psyche. I began to think a lot about living beyond hope and fear. What might that be like? Is it even possible, really? For the last 5 years, I have had a daily Vajrayana practice that is quite elaborate. In this time of lockdown with all things cancelled, no one to turn to as I live alone, I began to feel that even the Vajrayana practices were an expression of hope and fear; supplicating certain deities hoping for certain outcomes, supplicating protectors to stave off bad outcomes. I’ve stopped the practice and have returned to simply sitting, stopping, listening, expanding, knowing. Simple awareness of the vastness. Oh, and the garden!
I haven’t found them yet this year but in summers gone by I have had a family of Praying Mantis nestled in the tomato bushes. The adults are as much as 7 or 8 inches tall. The little ones only about 3 inches tall. I feel as if I am looking at some sacred being from another galaxy come for a visit when I look into their eyes. It is a garden blessing! The resilience of life is present in the garden. When tended with care and love, it gives bountiful color and flavour. Every year I am astonished to my core to watch the tiniest seed planted in the earth become huge tomato plants that yield large, juicy fruits or even tinier seeds that give spicy radishes, eggplant and arugula. The cycle of life does indeed continue.
It is quiet today. No dirt bikes or backfiring cars or lawn mowers riding around. No burgers grilling or gangbangers blaring their radios as they wash their cars. I like this. All I hear are the many kinds of birds, including the ones I have thought were bats for 15 years but now know are Swifts, zooming and darting through the sky. They fly like bats and sound like bats but their bodies are much bigger and longer. I hear one of the falcons. Don’t see him or her but hear them. We have a family of them, here in Providence Rhode Island, that have lived for years at the top of the empty Superman Building. Almost sounds like they are singing, “hey” in their high-pitched voices.
In all the stripping away, all the loss, there is beauty being revealed. There is grace and peace being revealed. These are the parts I do not want to fade. This is the growing priority I want to keep at the center of my heart. Let it inform all my choices for life going forward. No more speeding along, worrying about money and if I’m making enough. Instead, make this awareness central, live within my means, my garden, and contribute. Bring extra fruits and veggies up the street to the food pantry. Continue to teach, write, maybe make another film. Let this time work me over, work us over to come out the other side aware of our interconnectedness and bring us to our wisdom, our care for each other and the planet.
Serene Asaari Duhaithem
Location: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
About: I'm a writer because somehow, the words always find me. My inspiration has always been my hope and faith in myself and the world in how it is and how it can be.
Age: 21
The world has immensely changed. People became somewhat cleaner. They became so much more aware of their surroundings and the world. In other words, everyone became exposed. The story wasn’t about some country that was at war a continent away that could be easily muted. The story became about us, all of us. The war became between us and this invisible enemy that we still can’t fully understand. Our battles became with ourselves, with our desires to go out or pretend like nothing is wrong. Every single one of us has been exposed to the horrors that have been going on around the world and it just couldn’t be avoided anymore. No one could just turn off the news and walk away because where would they go?
I believe this has been an awakening. It has been an awakening to the abuse our environment endures from us. It has been an awakening to the desperate need of the affordability of health care, of having resources. It has been an awakening to the chilling truth that we can barely stay still without losing our minds, that we can barely sit with ourselves or take a break. The entire world was wrapped with fear and uncertainty. No exceptions or privileges. For once, we all became the same no matter how we looked like, how much money we had or where we came from.
In the end, the truth came out. We are all fragile humans and we all need help. Though, through all the fear and uncertainty, so much bravery and compassion rose above the rubble. The important things became more prominent. Our relationships became a priority. Our health became what is most important and that’s how everything should’ve been in the first place. I just hope we never forget even when all of this is over. We don’t forget the pain and the loss of this great war and we continue on with compassion and bravery.