R.B., 58, an English Professor in Shimoga, India
“Someday you will remember
The long line of migrant laborers
Who cleaned your city,
Built your buildings…”
“Someday you will remember
The long line of migrant laborers
Who cleaned your city,
Built your buildings…”
“The hardest part of this has been the inability to interact and socialize with some of my friends, and then losing friends due to the distance over the pandemic.”
“I will take off the clothes of reality
I shall put on the garment of truth
And after diving into the depths of the sea
In the waves I shall seek oblivion…”
“I’m waiting for you…
the clocks broke tonight…
I’m waiting for you…
and I paint hope…”
“Being physically separate from others has seriously impacted the sense of community here, and I sense it will be difficult to get that back. The political divides that have become deep, and the different outlooks on COVID and societal restrictions, have pervaded too many things.”
“Time ran away like herds of ghost jackalopes. He camped in a valley near a hill of petrified wood and fossils. Birdy felt surrounded by something mysterious, almost like spirits of evil. He built a shelter of stoned timber and sang some old Little Feat songs.”
“After a strange year of semi-isolation and worrying, I am finally getting my first dose of the vaccine and I am very excited about it. I have a wedding to attend in April 2022, in Seville (Spain), and I am hoping that most of the countries achieve the so-called herd immunization, so that I can travel without restrictions and without fear of doing it.”
“A virus inhabits the gray zone between the animate
and inanimate, spreads unseen from touch, breath,
the very qualities that make us human…”
“Being an essential worker I still had to ride on the empty BART trains to work every day praying to God that I would not get this virus. I was hearing that at the clinic I worked at we were running short on supplies (i.e. hand sanitizer, mask, PPE). My anxiety was rising as we started to run out of protective gear and I was reusing a disposable mask going on day 5 already.”
“…I also had to take food up to my Mother because she was afraid to go to the store to shop. I took her for drives along the beach to cheer her up.”
Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University.
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