5. View From My Window – Lily Brooks-Dalton
Photo and art by Laura Capucilli
What is a window but a picture frame? And what is a picture frame but the borders of a moment?
I’ve been thinking a lot about windows lately. I feel like we’re all on the same page about windows these days, especially those of us in cities. They’re tantalizing, nurturing, VITAL glimpses of that wondrous destination we are, depending on some extent to your locale, encouraged to avoid: the outdoors. Initially, it seemed like spending time alone in nature was maybe one thing we could do safely, but here in California, not-distant-at-all socializing ensued, which led to the closing of many of the gateways to LA’s outdoor spaces (beach parking lots, parks, trails, etc). So, in my little corner of Los Angeles at least, the collective gaze is laser-focused on these little panes of glass that separate us from the rest of the world.
What is a window but a picture frame? And what is a picture frame but the borders of a moment? I watch my cat splayed across the windowsill in my apartment and I see a creature that has mastered this art of observation, of witnessing the world one rectangle at a time. I can’t help but think I have some lessons to learn in this arena...and ample time to learn them. Since looking out my windows with such round-the-clock care, I have never seen the view quite so clearly or completely.
– Lily Brooks-Dalton
Prompt:
Find a good spot in front of your favorite window. What do you see? Write about the view—this can be a description of what’s unfolding right now, or you can branch off into a fictional reality. Maybe the window is open and sounds, smells, and a breeze are slipping in; maybe there are people in the street, maybe it’s empty. Either way, record the moment.
Alejandra Redondo
Location: Mexico City
About: It made me think about our relationship with windows and how we always want them to show us novelty, but in a certain way, our windows are forcing us to go inwards.
Age: 30
¿Cómo decir ventana de otra forma que no sea ventana? Y es que en sí, ya usamos la palabra para hablar de otras cosas en sentido retórico, así que no tengo otra forma para referirme a ella. Así que estoy frente a la ventana al exterior, que ha cobrado otro significado. Afuera el peligro, aquí, la frágil mirada que puede romperse fácilmente, que observa vulnerable todo el tiempo, pero que no le huye a estar presente.
Los seres humanos somos como ventanas en ese sentido, pero nos gusta ser ventanas de trenes que se mueven por lugares inusitados; de coches que van a toda velocidad arañando el peligro; de aviones que nos llevan al destino soñado; de hoteles donde vivimos el amor de distintas formas, disfrutando el escenario; de otros coches que se esconden para empañar los cristales y crear un refugio de calor y deseo, que siempre puede ser sorprendido, lo cual le añade sabor a la experiencia.
El punto es que ahora estamos limitados a la ventana fija, a la única, amarrados a la paciencia y a la observación, o más bien contemplación; porque parados en la ventana estamos obligados a mirar adentro, donde existen todos los escenarios posibles, de esperanza y de terror, de nostalgia y diversión, de recuerdos, planes y ansiedades. Pasados, futuros y volver al presente donde asomados por la ventana llega el sol, la posibilidad de un nuevo día, donde se asoma la luna que sigue siendo solitaria. Donde yo, en particular, me topo con las jacarandas, esas flores moradas que para toda la vida tendrán un extraño significado de hermosura y de dolor, de la ausencia terrible de con quién me gustaría estar confinada en cualquier esquina del universo, pero también del recuerdo, y con eso un poco de esperanza de que las jacarandas a veces anuncian llegadas y, dentro de sus cúpulas curiosas, traen consigo una emoción indescriptible.
La ventana está fija, pero algo se mueve.
Alyssa Swart
Location: New York
About: This piece describes the view from my favorite window. It branches off into my own thinking about my neighbors, as well as my own safety.
Age: 32
It is beginning to drizzle. Only one or two cars pass along the highway. I have never seen the streets so empty. Sidewalks appear abandoned. My block has a gentle, stark quality to it. Its silence has a sound; I can nearly hear the city breathe.
The new walkway is “on;” bright lights with a grandiose quality, for the pedestrians now sitting in their homes. At 7:30 every night, a shock of light enters my apartment, and it never fails to startle me.
More and more cars are defying the streetlights. Running through reds. Hundreds of u-turns over these past few days – makes me think of how careful I’ll need to be when I finally take a walk; another danger to dangle in the mind. But I understand – it feels as though all social contracts have been broken, flagrantly torn. The driver is merely pointing out how feeble the light is to keep us safe, healthy. Perils now come aerosolized. That driver is reclaiming some mutation of power back.
The artificial lawn in front of my building is empty, but there will most likely be kids or weight lifters there later. The neighboring playground is eerily deserted. I still remember the first weekend after the city shut down – children’s playful laughter, their rambunctious games and ceaseless energy woke me up that Saturday morning. I didn’t mind, though. It felt akin to being woken up by a robin singing. They’re doing what they do. Now, all I can think about when I see the large webs, slides, and springs are germs spreading and sticking on tiny hands, coating the indifferent metal.
I haven’t heard laughter outside in weeks.
The children are all inside, and with this thought, instantly, I feel pointed compassion; concern for all the parents who have become teachers to their kids and all the kids who are confused and anxious, but still moving through their day the best they can. All those children who need to run in order to sit still, who need tools to read and toys to laugh, and they’re all inside - stretching what they have into what they need.
In the distance is a slightly obscured view of the Hudson. It made me fall in love with this apartment, and I fall anew every day. Bridges and lights shimmer beyond it, but it’s the hypnosis of the waves that captivates me. Even far away, its swaying stillness is so compelling, so graceful, and its occasional volatility - a spike of white amongst the silver blue - makes me shuttle into the future, when this whole neighborhood may be subsumed by waves. But today it is calm. An occasional boat passes, and even a cruise ship, which is strikingly bizarre.
The trees are a radiant green, swaying as if in laughter. A delivery truck circles past, causing a reflexive fear within me. Some foreign item will enter the building, like some foreign particle entering my body with antibodies as absent as pedestrians on the streets. All that is outside my room seems dangerous, and I clamor for greater distinctions between outside and in. I rehearse all the disinfected precautions I take every day, like a soothing lullaby to quiet my fear. The truck leaves, and I realize, in anxious awe, that I had never noticed the brilliant green of the trees.
Cristina De La Rosa
Location: Monterey Park, CA
About: I am currently living in the Los Angeles area and one of my favorite places is in The Vineyard.
Age: 38
This was the only view of the outside world I had for my 17-day confinement. Since I was in Southern California most of the day it was sunny, and I tried to open the blinds most days to bring in the healing sun rays into my life. I love California and my family; this is where I grew up, but it is not a calming place and does not bring me peace. My parents don't live near the beach (it is 11 miles away or in normal LA traffic time it is an hour drive away). The business of the city surrounds me: sirens wailing and rumbling trucks on the freeway. It is nice see to families walking across my window and I love the laughter from inside our house.
Breath, in and out. Calm. The bars disappear.
Breath, in and out. The cars drive away.
Breath, in and out. The cookie cutter houses disappear.
Empty the mind. Birds chirping. Waves lapping.
Open my eyes. I see sunshine and a low stone wall. Vibrant green fields and a peek of the Atlantic Ocean. Early Autumn in Chilmark.
Staying Calm.
Danielle Leventhal
Location: Rye, NY
About: I'm a 26 year-old artist who procrastinates my painting practice by writing.
Age: 26
Outside my window is the beach. My room specifically juts out towards the water, and makes you feel as if you’re being rocked to sleep in a fancy submarine.
Water has been a theme in my life since I had a dream 3 years ago, in the week leading up to my cancer diagnosis. I was in the midst of getting my first scans and tests to find out what the large mass in my chest was from. This was before my parents ever considered moving to the beach.
I dreamt that the four us—my parents, brother and I, stood at the edge of the water, feet in the sinking sand. We are holding hands, facing the water with our eyes closed. It’s dusk, and the sky is a light violet that I love. The waves are huge, crashing over us with a force so strong, over and over and over our heads. This goes on for the whole dream. I feel calm, and I know my family does, too. I know we will make it through each crash, even with the screams in the background coming from several different people (fear).
I’ve come back to this dream before but never thought to tie it to this new house. 3 years later, the four of us are quarantined at the very edge of the water, holding hands (and washing them constantly), as I go through treatment once again. The chemo I’m trying is called Trabectedin. It’s made from sea squirts.
Illness and my effort to understand life, the mind and body have always led me back to science research. And this research has always led me back to nature. It feels right that I’m finally pumping a poison into my veins that is at least mixed with a creature from the sea.
Flynn
Location: Stuart, Florida
About: “The eyes are the windows to the soul.”
Age: 58
My Favorite Window
My favorite windows are her eyes
No lies, I see her soul
The cloudy days are clearer
When I feel her getting nearer
When I'm looking through those windows
I feel closer to the truth
Janna Schledorn
Location: Melbourne, Florida
About: Prompt #5 occurred on Palm Sunday, a religious observance I have always enjoyed, and I sat on my porch looking out the window as the prompt suggested. My daughter, Greta, introduced me to the Isolation Journal Project, and Prompt #27 introduced me to the idea of liminal space, which I have only just begun to ponder (and prompted me to buy and read Jordan Kisner's book). Prompt #100 helped me process some of the uglier emotions I have been feeling.
Age: 58
Palm Sunday from My Window
such still trees today
no palms dancing Hosanna
we sing anyway
Jessica Payne
Location: Hamilton, Canada
About: I'm a writer living in Halifax working on an MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of King's College. I wrote this during my last month living in that tiny one-bedroom apartment in Hamilton before I moved in the pandemic. The window I write about here was a sort of portal to a place outside time or circumstance, which gave me perspective, many times while rented there.
Age: 33
Window Over Twin Leaves
To decide on my favorite window in this apartment, requires precision. I have two main ones to choose from. This is a privilege. Especially in the new world we live in where we barrack in our homes, forbidden contact with other human beings.
This small apartment though, on the west side of this steely city, is completely mine. Not mine, in that I own it. It’s mine in that I share it with no one, other than my cat. I live here alone. The space is here, whenever I need it. I’ve decorated it the way I want. I’m without another’s desires, needs, preferences, and any otherwise imposed will. I have claimed it as home. It’s been mine for three years now — a haven from outside sad spaces.
There is a bay window, which I’ve fallen in love with since putting my writing desk below it, but my bedroom window has seen me through each morning and night since I moved in. It is the first one I look out of and that last one I face before sleeping. When I was going through a very tumultuous breakup, I had this instinct to change the furniture around. The bed originally faced the window and the dresser sat beside it. The room has a large drop ceiling to the left of the door. It hovered over the bed at the beginning. A heavy cloud.
The room is airy now, lighter, with the bed beside this window. My Aunt’s wicker chest sits at the base of my bed. The dresser, where the bed was, so the door opens into the room. The window is large. I can watch the sun stream against the brick houses across the street in the morning and set over the trees at night. Shadows of spruce waltz on the house two-doors down. The light glows sharp during evening hours. Garden clippings silhouette on the sill. Eventide is the best for light in this room. Many photographs mark this place during that time.
The window’s panes are old. Cracked with chipped ivory paint. There are two metal latches fixed for lifting it. My fingers fit their grooves. The ledge is about a foot wide when its open to the screen. My cat lingers for hours here, twitching her tail as robins float the gravel floor. Her nose searching the sky for fresh air.
When I moved in, the windowsill had a tiny rusty jar of seashells on it. It was diamond shaped and the seashells weren’t just any seashells. They were the kinds Anne Morrow Lindbergh combs for in Gifts from the Sea — channeled whelk, moon shells, double-sunrise, oyster beds, argonauta. All the seasons in one corroded box. I don’t live near the sea, but salt water is my country too.
I’d never seen these kinds of shells in person before. We had sand dollars in our bathroom growing up. My mother brought them back from trips with my father to his place of origin on the Great Northern Peninsula. There were snails on rocks there. I remember those. Tiny eyes staring back at you from stone. My father called them wrinkles. Fancy restaurants call them escargot. Everything depends on place.
There was something about this little diamond full of shells, left for me on the sill that seemed to say, this is a good place for this time. I didn’t know how long these shells had been there or if they belonged to the previous tenant. It didn’t matter really. They seemed set there just for me. They were my gift from the sea, marking this very specific season where I’d live alone for the first time.
This apartment was the place I moved after I separated from my husband. I needed it to be okay as I was anything but okay. I was anxious. Restless lived in my skin. I didn’t know how to be content with myself. I’d forgotten. Or did I ever know? At the advice of my therapist, I put a note in this window, above the shells. It was by Julian of Norwich. I wrote her words:
“All shall be well, and
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well”
I hung them over my sleeping place as a prayer.
The paper is faded now. Crumpled and curled at the edges. It’s worn and brown from all the light this room receives. I look at it, a reminder for myself in this uncertain world. I cannot see the words anymore, but I know they are there. I know what I wrote then, as a peace petition for this home. These invisible words hold me still.
To this pile of shells, I’ve added some from my travels: California, Gozo and a handful from my time in Mazunte.
This window is a sort of opening, not just to the outside world, but to another place I cannot see. It’s a reminder to me that I don’t know what lingers beyond the edge of darkness when I close my eyes. I don’t know how or why we dream. From what place do dreams come?
A large Mulberry tree used to obstruct this window’s view. The tree was almost eighty. When the new neighbors moved in, they cut the old tree down. It was for the best. Eighty is the end of a Mulberry’s life and it could have fallen on me in my sleep. Shortly after the tree was chopped to pieces a storm hit. The highest winds, like those of the gales my father knew as a boy living beside the Atlantic. Gusts made drums out of the glass above my head. The tree, at any moment could have cracked.
I’m preparing to move from this apartment soon. I will be by sea where my father comes from, working on an MFA in creative nonfiction. I did not know this would be where I’d go when I first moved here. I didn’t know I’d dream this dream or be well enough to live it.
Looking out, I see my neighbor’s porch. They have a small white gate, which unlocks to their front garden. My neighbor is strumming a banjo. His two girls play on the hilled barrier between my driveway and their lawn, where the tree used to be. They entertain each other over the patch of two-leaf squills. Virginia bluebells will grow next.
The two sisters are there everyday now, with brooms as planes to take them elsewhere. The next day the poles are flags to mark their land. I see my sister and I in them. I do not know when I will see her next.
I can hear a woodpecker but it’s not in sight. The sparrows sing from some other place too. Their cat, resembling mine, chases a grey squirrel in their woodland. My neighbor gets up to ask a man passing by on the street how he’s doing today. The man on the street carries a child in his arms, with another clenching his hand below. My sister and I are in them too. The two families are standing at a respectful distance. Close to their own, far from the others. The daughter on the ground begins talking and my neighbor crouches low to show he’s listening. This is how we move in the world now.
I do not know how I will move home in this new world. It was decided before the restrictions. There are officers at the borders between the provinces. We are all on the inside and the outside at the same time.
Long white linen curtains part the center of my window. It becomes a stage. A world I am not in but I am watching. From my view, the neighbor’s daughter picks up her cat, snuggles her face into it, close, close, closer. For today, I know, all manner of things shall be well. We aren’t so far from each other.
Kate Cabigao
Location: New York, New York
About: I love to write about my thoughts, feelings and experiences ranging from the silliest to the most serious moments. My mission is to inspire and empower those around me to make the most of their lives by sharing my story. During this pandemic, I not only gained resilience but reclaimed ownership of my voice and life.
Age: 24
Looking Out My Window, Finding Meaning
“Kate, it’s no longer time to do what we want, but time to do what we should,” a wise friend said during a reality-check FaceTime call.
Should I move back to the Philippines or stay in New York despite the escalating COVID-19 pandemic? As an international student and graduating senior, this is my current dilemma: the immediate need to make big decisions and being okay with the opportunity costs and its consequences. If I leave New York anytime soon to be in the comfort of my home, the Philippines, I won’t be able to re-enter the U.S. since my student visa will no longer be eligible. I lose the opportunity to work in New York, and this is something I worry about regretting in the future. However, given the deteriorating job market and economy, it is also not an ideal time to stay and find work in the U.S.. The statistical predictions made on the trajectory of this pandemic point to a glass half empty for me and a lot of international students who hope to live in the city beyond graduation.
“Before things get better, things have to get worse first,” another friend of mine wisely said. Having no set timeline for the summer and the rest of the year is a huge source of discomfort. Everything is up in the air. New York is the epicenter of a pandemic that has only begun. How much longer do we have to quarantine ourselves? Is there something worth waiting for? There is no quick fix as this pandemic continues to escalate by the day.
Shaken, uncertain, and disappointed; that’s how I feel whenever I look out my window. I see thick clouds slowly moving across the sky covering and revealing the sun. Down below is the East River competing for my attention, with its twinkling current moving towards one direction. At the forefront, trees are teasing me as they sway against the dazzling sun and its piercing rays, calling me to walk on the empty streets.
So many thoughts and decisions to make in the coming weeks, and here I am still unsure and frazzled. These past weeks feel like a whirlwind and an eternity of uncertainty, a spring break like no other. Sitting with my thoughts and emotions, I find myself and my faith tested. Within days I’ve had classmates and friends fly out, leaving this hole in my heart; no proper goodbye, celebration, or closure.
I’ve never had this much time to think nor be at home alone, yet isn’t this also what I’d always wanted? More time on my hands? Yet here I am restless and breathless… Suddenly, living the hustle-and-bustle lifestyle is no longer the priority, but rather, staying in and focusing on health and survival. Back to the simple life, aren’t we? We no longer live to work in the city, but work to live in the confines of our home, and if privileged, through our laptop and phone screens. A funny friend of mine jokingly suggested that we “revise our diplomas and resumes, and replace NYU with Zoom University” in reference to the rest of our semester being conducted online through Zoom video calls.
In my four years living in New York, life has never been this unpredictable, mundane, and quiet. There was always a plan -- from Point A to Point B. I would spend hours on campus, Washington Square Park, and in between classes, meet friends in cafes, and end the day in some restobar. Long walks to start and end my day are what I truly miss. From my apartment, I would walk across East Village: 1st Avenue, 10th Street, Saint Mark’s, Astor, and Broadway. The cafes, food stalls, pedestrians, their cute dogs, and the smell of coffee mixed with all kinds of food wafting in the air are encounters I grew accustomed to and now yearn for. Being stuck in my apartment all alone has made me appreciate the little things that I did not notice before: my freedom to move around the city and be around others. Perhaps now is the time to take care of ourselves and reconnect with those around us. Maybe this is an invitation to rethink how we’ve been living our lives; how we treat ourselves and others. And upon reflection, how we can reinvent ourselves if necessary. While social distancing and self-quarantining are what we ought to practice, love and support are what we need most at a time like this. Despite all the broken promises and plans, I do see a glimmer of hope because of the individuals that have shown so much concern and support, making me feel safe and secure. Being virtually present for one another is crucial today, so make sure to satisfy the social creature in all of us and plan regular calls with loved ones.
Looking outside my window, I realize that I should examine myself more internally. Instead of wishing for a non-reality, I know I must adapt. I am continuously inspired by friends and mentors who have easily adapted, proving their resilience and compassion for all. “Keep calm and be patient,” my Education Studies Program Director advised.
While some tragically have a “survival of the fittest” mindset and hoard for themselves, there are also those that know to share their blessings. A dear friend gave me a bottle of hand sanitizer when she knew I ran out. Another friend calls regularly to see how I’m doing. When I thought my faith was fading, it returned quickly owing to the timely meditations, reflections, and acts of kindness that my friends and the Magnificat Lenten Companion booklet have provided me. My faith, thus, continues to grow and helps me make sense of what is happening in the world in relation to my role.
Looking outside my window is a beautiful reminder of what we had and what we could still have if we are responsible for our decisions and actions moving forward. Mother Earth is still a mother, after all. She is our home. She can only shower us with love, security, and protection if she is treated with care and remains healthy. Let us remember during this lockdown that Mother Earth is healing. Let’s take the time to heal ourselves too, and create our own restorative spaces at home. Stay hydrated and nourished. Drink vitamins. Do home workouts. Do homework. Pray fervently. Read and write leisurely. Sleep. Contact family and friends. Clean and sanitize your place and yourself. Watch entertainment shows and monitor the news.
The way my friends and I are slowly adapting is a true testament to the resiliency of human beings. It is beautiful to witness and completely empowering. In this opportune season of Lent, I will turn to God the Father for further guidance in saving us and Mother Earth.
Laura Capucilli
Location: New York, New York
About: I've lived in the same 400 square foot rental apartment in New York City for most of my twenties and have held onto it tightly because of it's sunny backyard. My backyard has served as a small respite from the busy city for myself, family, and friends, which became all the more vital during quarantine. The paintings I've shared are part of an ongoing ode to my window that my boyfriend (and new quarantine partner) and I have taken up, inspired by Lily Brooks-Dalton's prompt.
Age: 29
Lorelle Mariel Murzello
Location: Mumbai, India
About: My name is Lorelle and I'm from Mumbai, India...The Isolation Journals' prompt has been my only motivation to slide my long glass windows and look outside my room. I’ve never loved opening windows because my grandmother would always tell me to close them post 7pm or mosquitoes would enter and bite me to death all night. I’ve always wanted to soak up the sun, enjoy my morning tea+ chirping birds--but my fast-paced morning routine never let me.
Age: 25
Several other windows
Outside my window, there are several other windows
Thanks to the absence of curtains, I get a peek into several lives.
Homes are now self-isolated units, made from forced-family bonding.
There’s a sense of uneasiness---
A conversation waiting to be had
With a side of frustration--- that’s low-heat pressure-cooking.
Someone said “It’s the age of the internet, you’ll be fine”
And maybe, it’s true.
Flat-screen black mirrors fill up wasted time,
Someone’s screening a movie, someone’s watching the news.
The fairy-lights and smell of garlic-mushroom spaghetti fairly disguise the pandemic-dread
And prayers and wishes seem to be, all that is left.
Outside my window, there are several other windows, thanks to the scarcity of space.
There are lives, I’ve never known and never will
But there’s hope that keeps us safe.
Madison Gill
Location: Colorado
About: I wrote this in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, I was quarantining with my parents and staying in my childhood bedroom. So I used Lily Brooks-Dalton's concept of the window as a way to sort of reckon with the change happening around me, and to illustrate how some things change so drastically while others don't at all.
Age: 25
Beyond the Window, the World Goes On
The window in my childhood
bedroom facing southeast hasn’t
changed. Same scratched sill, torn
screen. Sticking in the same
place when opened too wide.
But the world outside has.
People walk their dogs
wearing surgical masks.
Meanwhile, the hospitals
spill over like cupped palms
beneath a broken faucet. And yet,
the world beyond the window
goes on: the absentminded Aspens
shiver in the gusting wind,
shaking their leaves like tiny
tambourines. The cattle graze
in the pasture, unbothered.
And the familiar saw-toothed
silhouette of the San Juans
lords over it all. As it has
for thousands of years
before me, as it will for
thousands of years after
I am gone.
Mariana Villas-Boas
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
About: I used the prompts very much as a trampoline and let them take my where they wanted to. This was useful as a way of discovering what was beneath the surface of my own inner landscape in these very convoluted times.
Age: 40
Everyone is wearing their best finery: smoking jackets and drooping diamond earrings; fabric draping off of female bodies, rustling when the women walk. The men’s chests are puffed under their pressed shirts. Somewhere, violins are playing. We are at an elegant dinner party, but a wildfire rages outside. We do not know yet if it will come for the rest of us, but the roses on the tables have begun to wilt from the heat and there is condensation on the glasses of ice water. The violinists have taken note of their nearest exit. The guests are sweating. Eyeliner is melting on a few faces and being dragged off-course by crow’s feet. The men hold on to their decorum and keep their jackets on, but the struggle shows in their furrowed brows. We desperately try, all of us, to keep up the banter, as some of our acquaintances silently disappear. A glaring space is left where they were. This is how I would describe lockdown to a non-inhabitant of our planet. The healthier you are, I’d tell it, the more lavishly you are decked out. Healthy is the new privileged.
Since coming indoors, I have been struggling with my sense of time. It has shed its clearly defined parameters and morphed into something much more fluid, moving in all sorts of loops and halts. It’s as if the waves in the ocean, instead of always moving reliably towards the shore, now take random leaps sidewise or backwards. Riding them, I risk whiplash. What time feels like and what it is seems separated by the deepest, darkest trench right now.
All this jolting has made it hard to think. In the early days of confinement, I kept walking across my apartment with a task in mind. Whatever it was would get lost and I’d end up standing mid-room, trying to piece together what I had set out to do. This happened more than a few times. I’ve since learned from other people it happened to them too. Then, I’d have these eureka moments and rush-up from the couch to write down “salt” on the shopping list before anything else grabbed my attention. Other times, I’d be in the shower letting the hot water pour over my shoulders and realize I couldn’t reliably say if I had already washed myself. I did. Or was that yesterday? The days had become a blur.
Now that we are two months deep into confinement, things are a little different, but when I wake up it still takes me a moment to place myself within the week and month I’m living. My husband and I regularly check-in on each other about what needs to get done that day. But he too keeps forgetting about our son’s online class at 4pm and needs to be called back in from outside time with two minutes to spare. Meal and bed times are slipping, because we’ve stopped noticing the movements of the sun, perhaps because of how little we get to enjoy it now.
And it is not just time in the present that has become warped, but also my sense of future. Everything (potentially) happening after today feels equidistant, no matter how many weeks may separate events. I’m convinced it is because my power to exert control over any of them is equally remote. How long before schools reopen? Will the swimming pools open for the summer at all? When will children be allowed to celebrate their birthdays with friends again? When will it be safe to ride public transportation without masks? Should we cancel our trip back home in July? As immigrants, when will we see our extended family again? When will I feel safe?
There are many reasons for this struggle with time, but at its core is a mind coming to terms with all the radical change so suddenly dumped on our doorsteps. I’ve heard it called grief, but I’ve felt grief before and it didn’t feel like this. Grief makes the present throb, dangling the past and future just out of reach, and in grief anything is better than the present. I feel nothing as rhythmic or predictable as throbbing. What I feel is a loss of parameters. How can you create – in my case, write – with such a radical loss of references? There is something profoundly absurd in trying to construct a normality out of these completely abnormal circumstances, as if we were trying to continue with our fancy dinner party, while a wildfire rages outside.
As a writer, I am touched by this struggle with time in a very specific way. In terms of craft, the conceit of time cuts across our most basic techniques. Time creates order and order creates structure. What is plot, if not the organization of events in time? Tension can be created within a story by the order in which you give the reader information and the concept of order depends on a before and an after – therefore, of time. But stylistic elements of technique can also fall foul of time. Style implies not only the aesthetic selection of certain words, but also the ability to place them in a certain aesthetic order in a sentence and paragraph. It’s all about rhythm and flow, both of which hinge on a sense of time. Without time, you can hold an idea in your hand, but you cannot move it. You have no story.
What you do have is a lot of frustration. A creative outlet for any artist, and a writer too, is a lung. This intermeshing of body and soul from which we create is never clearer than in the bodily suffering that comes from not being able to do it. My stomach is in knots. I can’t sleep. My back has been bothering me. Mid-pandemic, there are so many reasons to acknowledge the hazard it is to have a body at all.
In early March, around International Women’s Day, I ordered a t-shirt with the slogan “Girls Just Want to Have FUN-damental rights”. It seemed like a relic from a by-gone era when I pulled it out of its manila envelope (and not, sadly, because women now enjoy the equal treatment of our male counterparts). It’s more that the dire urgency of the present situation has superseded other important concerns. And yet the two things are not irreconcilable. It made me again want to try and glue the heavy load of the present with the future we will, sooner or later, wake up to.
This horrible pandemic is a rare before/after moment. We all await with anticipation for it to be over. We long to cast off the crippling fear for our loved ones and for the physically fragile members of our community, not to mention for ourselves. We need to again feel the warmth of normal human interaction and shed the logic of contagion that can lead us to label strangers as “others”. They are others, but they are also brothers – lest we forget. And after, there will probably be some trauma, some obsessive-compulsive behaviors we have trouble shaking. Some people may find they have become utterly reckless about bodily harm in general, when they are finally able to unclench their anxious jaws. Some may find they have acquired an almost violent intolerance for all those that continue to act selfishly or negligently, in disregard for the climate or the poor.
Everything that is wrong with our slow-to-action political systems, healthcare structures, patterns of consumption, distribution of wealth and opportunity, lack of financial sustainability for the much-needed arts, sense of community has been brought into sharp relief. I’ve been wearing my activist t-shirt in the hope the world I wake up to when this horrible pandemic is over is not the same world we had going into it. That, I think, would be the worst possible outcome – the biggest waste of time.
Sky Banyes
Location: Paris
Age: 32
“What is a window but a picture frame?” I have had thoughts and feelings of similar vibes to this prompt – as expressed on my Day #3 as well as in my letter “It’s springtime!”. “What is a window but a picture frame?” I have indeed never noticed as deeply and broadly, nor taken in as fully, nor appreciated as greatly… my view, our lovely heartwarming, space expanding, expansive view. How grateful I am for now bring encouraged and guided (not forced) to stop and be. To be and see. To see and feel. To really live life and experience each moment, as it unravels.
“What is a window but a picture frame?” Isn’t, essentially, every moment of our live such a frame?
The prompt, Lily, calls these glimpses of the picture: tantalizing, nurturing, VITAL. Well, indeed! What’s stopping me from “framing” all such moments, captions in life so What’s stopping me, rather, from reframing, every single life “still”, however I intrinsically want? For, I am both director and spectator of my life movie. So, go on, take charge. Create your life. And… enjoy it..!