“This has been a time of deep self reflection and […] has made the Buddhist teaching of impermanence immediate and ever present. The dharma has allowed me to be open to what is the evolving and ever fluid circumstance. The recent protests over the George Floyd murder are just another aspect of this truth…”
“Medusa-like will we turn others into stone // In our self-isolation seeking our own blight? // Or in the tide of ripened self-reflection // Will we find our place beyond inequity?”
“I’ve been turning to historical accounts forged and recorded by AIDS activists to process my feelings about current events and keep the faith about the political challenges that turn a virus into a plague.”
“This election was different though. COVID 19 was here and everyone was urged to vote absentee.”
“This quarter was supposed to be my graduation quarter. I anticipated spending these months completing my dissertation. Instead, I have become a ‘chaser’ of egg lorries and fish tuk tuks.”
“I asked one guard in the dining-hall why he refused to wear his mask, in light of the death which he could be unknowingly introducing into my community, and he smiled as he responded:”Man, I’m just trying to spread the love.”And I was thinking: Oh yeah, they don’t view us as human. Why would they care if they kill us?”
“Of course those on high incomes feel like their throats have been cut, but it’s been a godsend for the low paid, young people and typically marginalised.”
“I live with Mom, Dad, Sissy and Bubba // on a street full of families and their pets. // Our pet is me, a boxer. I answer to Bob. // I don’t know why or what happened, but // everybody stayed home one day, all day //and every day since. I am one lucky dog!”
“We imagined summers and kayaking and a garden filled with ferns without leaving the car. But that’s not the drive that we use to fill our time. Rather, we fill the drive with one document after another. For the students, nothing exists but deadlines.”
“My pre-quarantine self was drunk on a deluded, inflated mirage of a functional mind and body. It took COVID-19 for me to realize that it was but a delusion.”
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.
Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA),
Stanford University
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