“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.”
“How odd it is that in our first picture together her uncle is wearing a mask, at a distance…”
“I looked at my credit card in hesitation. All the information from the news ran through my mind. How long can coronavirus stay on plastic?I hurried and passed her the card that she grabbed with a glove, swiped then gave back to me along with the glove. Now, I must have her germs instead, I thought…”
“…With the lockdown, I had the time to notice that the Navajo Willow tree in my front yard was sick. Had I not been stuck at home under this pandemic, I would not have noticed the smell—foul vegetable and yeast— from the tree. […] If not for the lockdown, I would never have had the time to observe the arrival of Spring…”
“On the negative side, many planned concerts have had to be cancelled, which has been disappointing to me and many others. With fitness centers and gymnasiums closed, it has been more difficult to work out and try to stay in shape. […] On the positive side, the lock-down has given me more time to practice piano than I’ve had in decades! It’s been a joy to revisit pieces that I haven’t played in years, and to learn new ones, too. […] I have planted a small garden, something I haven’t done since childhood, and am using this unexpected time as a golden opportunity to clear out clutter…”
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
Address:
4th floor, Wallenberg Hall (bldg. 160)
450 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Stanford Mail Code: 2055