PANDEMIC
365 Days of this Bullshit
Quick reflections on 52 weeks of solitude in a 500-SF apartment
It’s been a year. On March 9, 2020, I started my “self-quarantine.” That was a new word to me then (to all of us) and a wholly new experience. This exciting act of heroism — sequestering yourself away so as not to infect others — was a bit dramatic at first. Really, two weeks? It has now been fifty-two.
When I started my personal lockdown, I was just back from a trip to Seattle, then the epicenter. It was a celebratory trip, a film festival. Two days in, word around Seattle was that it was about to get dangerous there. So I boarded a plane, cutting my trip short to fly home to New York City, straight into what would become the new epicenter.
None of us knew what was coming: disinfecting the mail, the clamoring of pots and pans, capitalizing the word Zoom. Also: a dystopian nightmare of great and painful solitude. I will never forget the ambulance sirens, the only sounds the City made for months. The last picture in my phone of The Before Times was my birthday cake, eaten by a bar full of friends in Los Angeles. The next one is a solo roll of toilet paper, in portrait mode — my attempt at Instagram humor in March 2020.
