Astor Place in the East Village, with its well-known landmark, the moveable black cube, usually bustles with students, office workers, and NYU students, walking or sitting at tables, now deserted, the tables and chairs put away. CONTRIBUTED
NEW YORK—I just learned that the word “quarantine” is derived from the word for “forty”—quarante in French, quaranta in Italian, and cuarenta in Spanish. Forty days was the period during which a ship, arriving at a port and believed to be a carrier of contagion, was prohibited from having anyone disembark. During this pandemic, we’ve seen that scenario with a number of cruise ships, most notably, the Diamond Princess.
The thing that disturbed me about the media’s coverage of the affected ships was its almost exclusive focus on the passengers—privileged middle to upper-middle class, and, for the most part, white. Virtually nothing was written about the crew, mostly people of color, and their plight. They were most at risk. The paucity of reportage on them made it seem that they were expendable.
The captain of this ship of state (with sincerest apologies to captains) has that mentality. How else can one interpret his assertion that if the number of deaths due to COVID-19 plateaus at 100,000, then he will consider his administration to have “done a very good job.” To view these deaths as proof of a “good job” is simply obscene and yet another damning proof—as though anymore were needed—of his utter incompetency and a complete and total lack of a moral compass.
Here are more dispatches.
Poet Mags Webster in Perth, Australia:
The suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, can be quiet at the best of times; and if this extraordinary period proves to be among the worst of them, then these suburbs could have been custom-built for quarantine. Mine borders one of Perth’s two rivers, and is full of 1950s brick and fibro bungalows and twenty-first century concrete castles. I live in one of the 1950s houses; I can hear my next-door neighbour sneeze (loudly), and practise her flute (enjoyably). Goodness knows what she’s been making of the sounds coming from my place lately. Having been regularly tested in times of stress or celebration, my kitchen happens to make a superb disco-for-one. Proximity to the fridge (vodka and beer), non-slip floor, plenty of percussive surfaces, and a festoon of flashing fairy lights, and it’s Saturday Night Fever forever in the ‘hood. It was my birthday last week, and I was celebrating my 50th (for about the sixth time, give or take) on my own. I cranked the music up loud. Reasons to be thankful for the virus: in self-isolation, nobody can see you do the disco finger or the rolling vine. Unfortunately, however, they may hear you imitate Barry Gibb’s falsetto, but my neighbour is still speaking to me (via SMS). Anyway, my Studio 54 moment cheered me up no end. In these times of fever, I’d reckon there’s no better one to catch than Saturday Night (circa 1977).
Scholar and professor Cristina Juan in London:
The last few days in London have been so sunny that it has been easy to pretend it is summer. In between manic scrolling through news notifications, Face-timing with family and trying to finish a paper with yet another deadline, I have been time-lapsing photos of an iris spiking in my garden, amazed by its will to life, but hoping it won’t bloom before this is all over. Two days ago, I started making summer drinks with Vino Kulafu. It is perfect for my make-shift illusion. Orangey-red, a cross between Pimm’s and Aperol, strong and sweet but, medicinal. And it reminds me of home. I brought a bottle with me from when I was last in Cebu, just a month ago, before all hell broke loose. I am oddly comforted by the fact that one can buy this for 24 pesos in a sari-sari store, and that it is named after a 1930’s comic book hero. It is fifty proof, but with a sobering blend of inscrutable Chinese herbs: Wong Chin to keep my lungs strong, Sock Tee for healthy blood cells, Kam Kuk to give me a good night’s sleep. I am both slightly tipsy and hopefully healthy, while waiting.
Writer Trish Lim in Quezon City:
My friends and I schedule what we call e-numan [drinking] sessions through Zoom. We log in at the same time, our choice of beverage in hand. It’s not the same but we make do. The other day, one of my best friends lamented the fact that she would be celebrating her 30th birthday in quarantine. A day before the big date, we conspired to do a simple surprise salubong [celebration]. The plan was to send her a link to a funny video that was actually a Zoom meeting where we would all be online to greet her.
An hour before midnight, she decided to go to bed. We all panicked and reached out to her mother who then shook her awake before the designated time. She said that there was some kind of emergency and she needed to go online to talk to her best friend. Groggily, my friend logged in and saw the multiple faces on her screen eagerly waiting.
“Happy birthday!” we all screamed. A big smile spread on her face as we danced along to a YouTube budots [hip-hop] mix of the happy birthday song.
“What’s your wish for me?” she asked us. One by one, we gave our response: dinner together at our favorite restaurant, tight hugs, painting sessions, good health – simple things we had taken for granted before the lockdown.
After chatting for an hour, we decided to turn in. We sang a final verse of happy birthday, took a screenshot of our Zoom chat for posterity, and logged out.
Painter and writer Ricker Winsor, in Surabaya, Indonesia:
The Blessing in Disguise
The big house is spotless/ the marble floors gleam/ polished by Lusita’s broom/ swishing up a few dog hairs/ almost as they fall
A tropical breeze blows/ through the tall French windows/ and rustles the fruit trees in the garden/ Longan, Lengkeng, Lemon/ and the new leaves on / baby Flamboyant trees
transplanted from the park
We are home, staying quiet/ protecting ourselves/ our close people,
and family / a grandchild and his nurse
Everything is peace and harmony/ all of us sailing under the same flag/ able to see the beauty around us/ not running from place to place/ chasing our tails
Such is the blessing in disguise/ brought to us by disease/ showing us how to be
and to know / the gift given to us.
The situation in Indonesia is not bad according to their figures. Not bad in our world today is 1528 positive tests and 136 people dead out of 264 million people. But, of course, those are only the ones tested and nobody knows what the real figures are. Our big concern is what happens at Ramadan when every working person in every big city returns to his/her village for the holy days. If the government cannot stop that from happening it will be hell to pay. That said, from what I have observed the equatorial belt of our earth seems to be less affected.
Copyright L.H. Francia 2020
