Open Wide: The Stories – Page 6 – iblamethequarantine

Roadside Attraction

Yesterday, I went for a long drive. Well, as long a drive as one can have these days in Rhode Island, which is only 30 miles x 60 miles. Yes, the entire state. Right now, if you cross the border into Massachusetts or Connecticut, both of which are about ten minutes from my house, you are required to quarantine for 14 days. There are officials at the RI borders – airports, highways, train stations – taking license plate numbers, names, and phone numbers, so they can track your compliance.

I get it.

We’re this tiny place between two hot spots: Boston and New York City. Can’t be too careful.

But I needed to see the water. So I drove to Galilee. I stayed in my car except to take these shots.

With white-tipped peaks and churning waves, wind blasting and sunlight blinding, even from the car window, Nature made its point. You’re small. I’m big.

Some days that thought would intimidate me, but yesterday, it comforted. So did my car.

Enjoy this (not-so-ironic-anymore) tribute to the vehicle.

–KLB

Strange Faces

I’ve never liked grocery shopping before. I didn’t mind it, but more often than not I would choose to stay home. Now, I’d do anything to walk into a store.

I drive my mom to physical therapy every week. I don’t go inside the office. Across the parking lot, directly in front of me is a Super 1 Foods. I’ve never liked Super 1 very much. Now, it’s agony to sit in the car and stare at this store. What I wouldn’t give to browse the aisles, to help select our food, to compare prices.

It’s not just the shopping I want. No, I want to see faces. I’m not quarantined alone–far from it. Home almost seems too full sometimes, with an older brother home from college and three younger siblings.

No, I’m not separate from the human race. But I’ve always liked to people watch. I like to wonder about each passerby, to give them colorful stories and turn them into mythical creatures. I hunger for that silent companionship that shoppers have when they’re both looking at the same item, or when you have to figure out how to get a cart down a crowded aisle.

But now, the only strangers that I see are drivers in other cars. It only happens twice a week, and the glimpses last mere seconds.

I, a self proclaimed introvert, am longing to go shopping in the busiest store I can find. I want to spend the whole day in town, doing absolutely nothing. I want to go up and ask anyone and everyone whatever question springs to mind when I see them.

Insane, I know, but I blame the quarantine.

–Abbi Fisher, https://the-blue-shoe-skidoo.com/

The Scene: Anthropocine

The Pandemic of 2020

It began as a life changing disease in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Within weeks, it expanded globally. As virulent as the bubonic plague in fourteenth century Europe. It spread with mounting fury; like a nuclear Armageddon. Challenging the survival and future of human life. Established systems and practices of humanity are shattered by a highly infectious new coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19). Age-old practices of relationships, connections, and cooperative endeavors collapsing.

Ancient priorities of sharing among humans were flipped from positive to negative. The grounding of communication has switched from personal to electronic. Human evolutionary has changed the physical world. Only science can provide some relief from this scourge.

One could blame the pandemic quarantines restricting our opportunities for connection and mutual support. But that would be ignorant and short-sighted.

When we look deeper, we must acknowledge the role of human induced global geological and climate change in the Anthropocene era. The power of human Intelligence, science and population growth have changed our planetary home. From an economy of abundance we are now confronted by scarcity of critical resources: energy, water, clean air, etc. We have disrupted the ecological balance of earth’s complex natural systems. These deeper changes are incidental contributors to the current pandemic.

Let us hope that from this collective grief we may be inspired to accept our complicity with these mounting threats to our livelihood on our planet home.

Wider View

I’ve heard people say two things:

-“I can’t wait to get back to normal.”

-“Things will never be the same again.”

As a fiction writer, I plan the future. I make the future. For my characters.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that narrative is a construct. I expect the world to conform to the structures I’ve become familiar with as a storyteller. Draw the reader in. Establish desire. Drop the body. Raise the stakes. Add a conflict. Build in in a subplot. Deepen the character. Thwart desire. Climax! Denoument. Resolution.

These touchstones make story happen.

But life is not really a narrative arc. We bring this structure to the experiences we have not just for the stories we tell other, but for the stories we tell ourselves. It orders and helps make sense of the vast universe of sensations, memories, emotions, and relationships we have.

Normal. New normal. No normal.

Sense.

Today’s stories widen these windows and help us make sense.

–KLB

Student Window #3

I blame quarantine for many things: my dance studio closing, limits in grocery stores, etcetera etcetera. I want to blame quarantine for making me think I can’t express myself in dance anymore and that I am confined to a five by three space to do so. We all want to blame quarantine. Hell I want to blame quarantine on making me miss bashing school IN school. However shouldn’t we blame it on quarantine. The truth is we should blame it on ourselves. If we continue to go out and not stay inside people’s lives are in danger. We need to stay inside and adhere to the rules because so far we aren’t. We are at about 50% of people listening which means our world may never recover. If we get that number to 80%, corona might as well be gone in three weeks. But no one is listening to the pleas from people’s families of those who have died. No one seems to care that people are in fact dying. If no one seems to care people are dying how are we supposed to keep on living anyways. Seems kind of pointless if you ask me. People not caring about one another is why corona isn’t ending. In fact I retract my statement earlier, blame is too harsh a word. We need to help one another and make people listen. We as a community need to stop blaming quarantine at this point and make a difference.

–Elizabeth Pinheiro, Mt. Hope High School, junior

Student Window #2

As Corona Virus has taken over the lives of everyone, we all have been doing our own thing quarantining at home. My experience with quarantining has actually been good. With my sister in college in Alabama and my brother at Prep school, I don’t get to see them really at all so it is nice to have everyone home. I don’t really get bored since there around so I get the most out of my day for quarantining. I have been playing Mario Kart a lot lately and binge watching Netflix. Quarantining has made me a lot less stressed as I have time for almost everything I want to get done in a day. I actually don’t mind online schooling but I don’t think I could handle it in the fall so I am really hoping that everything will clear up and our world will be healthy again. Of Course quarantining has downfalls, as no more seeing friends, no more going out, and no getting to do what you want. I consider it a somewhat vacation because it has both benefits and downfalls. Since I have a lot of free time now, I have finally been able to work and get money. I am sad about school because since I will be leaving for Prep school next year, it is sad that I won’t be able to spend my last quarter at Burrillville High School with my friends. I will eventually start to miss school after a few weeks, but for now I am happy quarantining at home. I also miss my friends and I Basketball league which we had to suspend because of the virus. I would have to say that Basketball is what I am most excited for once our quarantining is over. I hope for the best and that everyone stays safe!

–Brayden Deschamps, Burrillville High School, English 10 Honors

Student Window

Honey-Brown

“I blame the quarantine– it’s making everyone think it’s a bigger deal than it really is.”

Jenna looked up through the sunroof at the expanse of black sky above them. Besides the occasional stray grocery bag, the parking lot had been void of all life for hours– a perfect spot for star-gazing. She adjusted her back and tucked her hands behind her head.

“And what if they’re not?”

“Then I guess this is our last goodbye,” Daniel placed a hand over his heart and let his tongue hang out like a dead possum.

“Don’t even joke like that,” she nudged him lightly with her elbow.

“Hey careful, you might infect me!” Daniel winced dramatically in a fake panic. His playful smile glittered in the dark as she laughed. “I should’ve sent you back home all sick and gross when I still had the chance.”

Jenna glanced towards her side door, knowing that her car was parked a few spaces away from them. Thinking about driving back to the city sent a pang of loneliness through her heart. “If this is our last meeting then you’re doing a lousy job of sending me off,” she said with a grin, shaking the thought of her journey home out of her head.

Daniel looked at her for a moment, then propped himself up onto his elbow. “You’re right,” he said, sounding determined. He felt around for his phone and turned it on. “If one of us ends up getting infected– which I don’t think we will– I want to leave you with a final, beautiful moment between us to think about whenever you remember me.”

Jenna watched him fiddle with his phone in the dark, his brow creasing into three distinct lines. She always teased him about those three wrinkles that made his otherwise boyish face appear weathered and mature. His eyes glowed against the light of his screen. Those were the eyes she had to force herself to look away from to avoid embarrassment, eyes that glittered when he saw her and scared her when they grew teary. And looking at them in the dark, she couldn’t remember seeing a more beautiful person in her life.

“Got it,” he said triumphantly and laid back beside her in the driver’s side, looking up through the hole in the roof. There was a moment of silence, then five familiar notes plucked from a guitar.

“You can’t be serious,” she clenched her eyes shut and felt a giggle rise out of her.

“Oh I’m dead serious,” Daniel said curtly, trying to hide the grin stretching from ear to ear. He turned to her with as serious an expression as he could manage and sang out “Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road. Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go . . .”

Jenna’s voice cackled with laughter as Green Day’s infamous “Good Riddance” streamed through his speakers.

“Oh come ON, Danny, you couldn’t have picked a more tacky goodbye song!”

“That’s the point!” Daniel cried out, laughing. “If it’s good enough to send high schoolers off at graduation, then it’s good enough for us!”

“But we could be dying and you chose Green Day ?!” Jenna rolled to face him and gripped her shaking sides, tearing up from the laughter bubbling out of her.

“It’s a classic!” He turned to face her and threw his hand up into the air. “I defy you to think of a better way to say ‘goodbye forever’ than with a heartfelt rendition of ‘Good Riddance’!”

Jenna’s eyes crept open as their laughter turned into breathy snorts of air. She looked at his ears that stuck out just a little too far and his nose that turned upwards at the tip and his eyes– gosh, those honey-brown eyes that looked at her and saw her, drank her in. And she thought of possibly never seeing them again. And her heart twisted into a tight knot that choked her throat and burned her eyes as Green Day strummed their dumb goodbye song.

Daniel’s brow lowered in alarm as he turned the music down. “Hey, you okay?”

Jenna nodded silently in the dark, her gaze unmoving. It had been fun to joke about the virus– helpful even– and the hysteria that had broken out days prior was inherently so silly. But the potential finality of the moment sank down on her shoulders and she felt herself grow smaller in her seat.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Daniel reached over and rubbed her arm soothingly. His touch warmed her in a way she was convinced no one else could, and she hated him for it. Damn his big hands and his cute nose and his beautiful eyes that might shut forever. Damn him for being someone she felt she couldn’t bear to lose.

“Aw Jen, I’m sorry,” he murmured as he shifted his face closer to hers. “I should’ve eased up on the jokes. I didn’t mean to scare you, I really didn’t. Don’t cry, okay? You’re gonna be alright, I promise.”

The world outside the car was still. Somewhere out there, across a highway or a state line or maybe even an ocean, someone was praying. Praying for a cure, maybe, or for guidance, or for luck. But inside the car, beneath a roof of stars, Jenna didn’t feel the need to pray. Her peace was right beside her, holding her by the arm and reassuring her with his honey-brown eyes.

The eyes she stared into as her hand drifted to his cheek. The eyes that glimmered with hope as she leaned in closer. The eyes that slid shut as he pressed his lips to hers, comforting her in the darkness.

Everything about that week said the world was full of killer viruses and panic and devastation and uncertainty. But here the streetlamps flickered, mimicking the stars glittering above the two hungry spirits through the sunroof. Here the universe spun to the sounds of corny Green Day songs. Here the world was drenched in honey-brown.

And this world was the only world Jenna ever wanted.

Elizabeth Sullivan, “It’s 1 AM and Corona’s on my mind.”

Utopia or Dystopia?

At this time last year, a student asked me to work with him on a creative-writing honors project focusing on dystopic fiction.

“Oh, I teach a class on dystopia and utopia,” I said.

“Utopia?” he replied. “What’s that? It sounds boring.”

The last few waves of young adults have cut their teeth on post-apocalyptic dystopias, plenty caused by viruses that got out of control. Their imagined dystopias are plagued with zombie attacks and tribal raids, magical armies of cool creatures with magical powers, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, going toe-to-toe, using technologically stunning killing machines that spurt blood of many colors in all directions.

For these kids, our current dystopia must be eye-openingly, eye-droopingly, disappointing.

Not wearing face masks? Not using sanitizer? Wiping surfaces?

Sounds more like death by parental nagging than trilogy-worthy drama. Who guessed dystopia could be so dull? People are baking, doing dining-room chair calisthenics, doing the same, damn work and schoolwork.

Of course, it’s only the lucky ones who have the privilege of boredom. Those scraping to find food, or care for the sick and dying, prepping for the bodies to come, those restacking shelves and delivering meals to the quarantined, well, as any writer knows, conflict makes drama.

So maybe my student is right after all, utopia is dull. But for the vast majority, so is dystopia. And aren’t we lucky to be bored.

Still, that student went on to write some pretty fun dystopic stories, one of which went on to win our college’s highest creative–writing award. Oh, yeah, that story is about a world isolated due to a virus; spoiler-alert, the heroine longs for escape. KLB

Today’s postings: STUDENT WINDOWS

Window #1

Every morning my dog, Max, and I take a walk in the woods behind my house. We walk behind the backyard of a home where there is a 15 year old Lab. Sometimes when we walk by, the Lab, Lilly is in the yard. When she is, Max and I stop and say hello and give Lily a few treats. At Christmas, Max and Lily exchange presents. We have been doing this for years. I seldom see her owners.
Lily’s mother is a school teacher and is out of work due to the virus. The other day she saw me and came out to talk, asking me how I was doing. I had been to Stop & Shop early that morning and gotten everything I needed for myself, but they were out of carrots for my friends’ horses and chicken for Max, which I told her.
That afternoon, she came to my house with a 5 pound bag of carrots and some really expensive Purdue chicken for Max, saying it was the only chicken available. She also brought a box of four S&S muffins for me! She did not want any payment, doing this out of the kindness of her heart and as a caring neighbor.

–Velma Clinton, “I’m 85.“