.SOMETIMES RAW.

Yeah, yeah, yeah… there might be a second Corona-wave crashing over us like a Tsunami. But for me, things are somewhat back to the “new normal”. I want to put a mental end to this pandemic and wrap up my Quarantine-Diary. At some point, enough is enough, I think. I have marveled at keeping a digital chronicle of things I have noticed during Corona. Logging what I see and feel is, I think, its own form of meditation. Dare I call it healing or staying sane.

What I Miss

Simply going to work every day and talking to my colleagues in person.

The gorgeously paradoxical quiet of an early morning at Naschmarkt/Vienna and the preparational buzz I can feel vibrating off the sidewalk as it gears up for opening hour.

Chattering strangers and having tea and conversations with my neighbour.

Chance encounters.

Hugging.

Going to a restaurant and having a normal dinner date.

Asking my son how his day was and genuinely not knowing the answer.

Shopping without a face-mask.

Feeling real distance between me and my bed and longing to get in at the end of the day.

Running home to change, then going right back out with friends.

What I Do Not Miss

Whenever my phone buzzes with the tell-tale vibration of an incoming text message, I experience what can only be described as a Pavlovian response–a mixture of thrill, curiosity, and urgency–to pick it up and read what it says immediately.

That some people still run to the other side of the street when I walk somewhere.

This couple who sleeps in that little park in front of my apartment for weeks now.

My son asking them to come upstairs and live with us.

That in Vienna, the social-distance you have to maintain to others is compared to a “baby elephant”. “Define a baby elephant, ” I ask my partner and we would have something to talk about for hours.

The guy dressed only in underwear ringing my doorbell at 9.30 p.m. to ask if he lives here.

Not “having time” for people who matter. I miss my family so much.

Getting caught on the anxiety hamster wheel because it is easier to speed up than to slow down.

Stop looking at people and feeling weird when they sneeze or cough. And vice versa.

The new “Corona-Rules” and to wear face-masks, especially when wearing glasses!

Depending on my phone for human connection.

Charging my phone at least twice a day.

Cooking daily.

Live newsfeeds of coronavirus updates anywhere on social media.

Waking up to uncertainty even though I am doing fine.

Feeling irresponsible every time the constant, nagging reminder of our collective mortality lifts from my mind.

The frequency with which I wonder if I am okay with all this madness.

What I Won’t Forget

How much closer my partner and I became.

How awesome it felt when I took my son for a walk through the neighborhood and a man was power washing a row of umbrellas in front of a café/restaurant. My son shouted, “What are you doing?” And graciously, he replied, “Getting our umbrellas ready for the summer.” I could see a small pathway toward normal. A pathway toward but not back to normal. There is a distinct difference because no matter what happens next, we are changed.

That it is possible to listen to the song “Golden Brown” by The Stranglers way too often while dancing through the living room.

That my manuscript for my third book is 99% done and ready to be published.

How much I wrote and read in the last couple of weeks.

That even though I won’t miss not knowing, we never really know (anything anyway).

The police officer on the subway train who told my son and I to put the mask over our nose because otherwise we will be fined. Welcome to Vienna. Here, they take things seriously and to another level but it somehow works.

Grocery store “security-guard-police” everywhere who tell you what to do.

How awesome it is to be able to order food online and how we discovered Honu Tiki Bowls. They are insanely good. If you are in Austria: Check out their website.

How much having a sense of humour helps and to laugh until you cry.

How I managed to stay at home with my son 24/7 and, in hindsight, it was okay.

We all have been put to some sort of test throughout this pandemic. It is these difficult times when people lose their temper and hope. Many either put their head down, fade out the noise and do whatever it takes or they simply raise a flag and break apart. Because we are our harshest critics and think we have figured life out while giving away so much power to doubt and fear. We try to convince ourselves that once we have overcome this immediate obstacle in front of us, our life will get infinitely better. Will it get better? We don’t know what will happen next. We are exposed to an unknown journey called life. There is only the self and the consequences of our choices.

I worked three days last week and it felt so good. This change was exactly what I needed. Things are loosening up here in Austria, however, everything still feels somewhat weird and deserted. While I walked to work, I thought that I never realized how much I took for granted the assumption that new things would always happen to me. That even while going about my normal routine, I would still see or hear or feel or smell something novel purely because I was out in the world, and each day would take shape a little bit differently as a result. That when someone asked me, “What’s up?” I would have an answer worthy of uttering. It is strange for this expectation to suddenly seem like a distant privilege, and stranger still that it’s the precise opposite. Staying mostly inside all these weeks seemingly indefinitely has become one as well. Is this why some call me the sullen girl?

Corona has claimed the most space of anything inside my head. Unavoidable to some extent since it has also marked off territory in every conversation, every email exchange, every radio station, every news headline, every scroll through Twitter and somewhat I even mention it in every article I write. The pandemic is global in more aspects than simply its geographic reach; it has infected the cultural mind-scape on every level. Just as I wonder how long it will be before reaching out to shake a hand becomes second nature again, I also wonder how permanently the indentation of this experience will remain pressed, like a thumbprint, on our psyches.

But then there is work. Work, an area of my life I have never been more grateful for and challenged by is such equal, concentrated doses. I feel fortunate to love my job, and in this period of grave economic uncertainty, I also feel fortunate to simply have an employer. However, at the same time, I have found that it is easier than ever for “work” to become precariously synonymous with “me”. I have never needed a sense of separation more, but I have never fought for one less. Work is the only thing I can rely on right now, and therefore one of the things that keep my brain from withering on the vine.

Time does not change, time reveals. The longer this corona-madness lasts the more aware I become of myself, my own flaws, and the imperfections that live in others. I begin to see them in passing moments and then all at once always in everyone around me. Is this how we are wired to cope with tragedy or romanticize nostalgia or perhaps even become kinder? Is it ever wrong to remember something better than how it was? I am not sure I do know this feeling. When I see possibility, what could be and not what is or was I welcome gratitude into my life. This is the story of human ambition, I guess.

Speaking of human ambition, I don’t know how routinely you are taking yourself to the fridge these days. For me, it has become the Grande Sortie of my day. I get up in the morning, walk to the fridge, and am like, “Good morning fridge-door. What have you for me today? Yes, yes, yes kitchen, give it to me!”

We all have our weird little comforts. To survive this pandemic. Those things we do not trick ourselves into feeling a sense of control. We organize junk drawers or defrost the freezer for the millionth time. We bake banana-bread. We are neurotic to keep our email account at zero and get incredibly soothed by that maintenance. We may set up special boxes, create shortcuts that automatically mark certain things or unsubscribe from things. Everyone has their drug of choice, and we all know the delicious high of EVERYTHING IS FINE. Mine is being in nature, spending a lot of time with myself, with my partner, and with my son. Are these just gateway coping mechanisms? Who cares. It fills me with a sense of calm. I will take that feeling whenever I can get it. We could all use a big hit of Everything is Fine right now.

The fact remains though that it is not, and while lots of us are cooped up struggling to cope with his mess, there are many out there in the thick of it. I think of that each time another ambulance screams past my window, knowing that, relatively speaking, I am more than fine and I will make the best out of this. Things could always be worse.

So, I will bake a cake now. It doesn’t make sense, but it makes me feel better. That’s just what I do in the new, new normal. And when this is done, I will take three slices to the living room with a cup of coffee, and wonder what the next new normal will bring. In the meantime, we enjoy that damn cake. For me, nothing is okay, but everything is okay.

My relationship with money was always pretty healthy. I know what I earn, I know what I can spend and I don’t live beyond my means. I did not have a job in 2019 and just started to work in January 2020. I survived with writing gigs, and help from friends and family. There were those times when I bought my son the food he wanted/needed and sometimes I ate nothing for dinner. Same for clothing. I just made sure he had everything he needed. I came second – holding everything together.

Before quarantine time, I would say I did spend quite some money. We needed furniture after the big move to Vienna. And we explored. Museums, bookstores, you name it. Since I have a very minimalistic approach to clothes, this is never an issue. Books are a different story. I used to buy a lot of books but actually read them all.

Since Corona, budgeting has been an act of self-care, as well as an act of will. It has taken me weeks to unlearn that I cannot browse through a bookstore. And the impulse book-free-fall from “add to cart” to “purchase” was never my thing. In some cases, I have stumbled, yet I have learned to flex my willpower like a muscle, propelled by the conversation around sustainability and excess. But, interestingly, it has never felt easier than now. This is my personal experience, so I will make that very clear before I say the following: I have never wanted “stuff” in my life less than I do right now. I cleaned my entire apartment, got rid of clothes (items I haven’t worn in a long time and won’t wear again), and stuff I wanted to sort through for a long time to realize how little I actually need. Maybe this is also because a global disaster has made me realize what is most important to me is not the things in my closet, my books and anything materialistic, but the connections I have with the people I love.

Is this feeling going to last? If I have learned anything about this time period, it is that these sentiments are subject to change. In a few weeks, when the temperature climbs up even more and warm breezes fill my apartment, maybe I will start having the itch to really buy that dress I saw window shopping yesterday, as opposed to thinking, hey, I already have something in my closet that can fit that need. Deep inside, I know myself so well. I will buy a book instead.

Since quarantine has started (Friday, March 13th in Austria), I have bought for my son and I: two puzzles, Lego, a basketball, a scooter, and food. He desperately needs sneakers that I won’t order online because he has to try them on. The puzzles and Lego were a joint decision because we both love it. It brings us joy, madness, and everything in between. It felt strange to be much more excited by these small purchases than I might normally be. We don’t need anything else, really. Which is an awesome feeling!

Everything else feels oddly like play. The “homeschooling”, gathering groceries for the week, rationing out new books while marking time with beverage habits.

Staying home feels like playing house. It is still strange, that in this time, my home suddenly feels full of charades. It might be also that we are slowly losing our minds. My son and I dressed up for dinner a couple of days ago saying we are taking each other out. Oh, he even prepared dinner – a pizza from scratch all by himself. There are half-finished Lego and maze-projects everywhere. My son moves from game to game to game, seemingly less and less interested in the “real world” and more and more in his imagined one. He does not want to go back to school. He loves it at home. He just misses his friends. “Mommy, you can be my teacher”, he said while I sighed and rolled my eyes.

I am the same. I really miss my friends and family. Fiction is absorbing me in a way it hasn’t in years. I find myself thinking about the characters the way I think about my friends, imagining their responses to things. I am interested in my appetite for play in the face of this lockdown and the unfolding dread that has caused it. Is this how children feel all the time? Is their capacity for fantasy partly derived from their limited freedom and the giant unknown? Are games a sort of response to fear and absurdity? Is it just simply that imagination is a lifeline or more complicated than that? All I know is that the ridiculousness in this time is fueling me, and I am climbing to it. In my experience, where adults dismay and panic, children often adapt and accept, which leaves room for frivolity. And this frivolity, unlike its adult counterparts, does not attempt to make what is awful into what is good. Children are surprised by neither joy nor pain. There are sad things and there are happy things. They don’t rule each other out or even overcome one another. They both simply exist. In a New York Times article a couple of weeks ago, Alain De Botton wrote about the coronavirus through the lens of Camus’s The Plague. He wrote: “recognize the absurd should lead us not to despair, but to a tragicomic redemption, a softening of the heart, a turning away from judgment and moralizing to joy and gratitude.” I think I am watching my child do precisely this. He is currently playing a game in which he is running from something scary and terrible. He expresses true fear and hides in his cave he built with huge cartons, blankets, and couch cushions. But then, he is laughing. After fear, he knows, comes a certain release.