Quarantine diaries: day 13

 So I spent all day yesterday in bed. Bought myself yumcha and basically lay around all day feeling pretty sorry for myself. Not quite sure what happened but my whole body - chest down - went on strike. I was rolling around on the floor trying to stretch my hip out, and then lying in bed on one side then the other, trying to make my obliques LET GO. My calves wouldn't even let me crouch down to pick some papers up. I mean, nothing was going to kill me, and nothing like covid-symptom muscle ache. This was no deep immune response. It was just my body saying no to PE. If the fitness was begun primarily in order to facilitate better mental health (all that endorphin, blood pressure, hormone stuff), then I guess the body decided it needed to remind me that other people live here too and should get a say. This morning I've woken up with a bit of a niggle in my right hip but otherwise feeling much more human and capable of basic human movement, so I guess a day in bed is all the doctor ordered? Either that or all the dumplings.

The nurses and police are supposed to come by at some point today to give me the all clear to leave. They keep mentioning a "certificate" and I am super (but not realistically) excited that it will be an actual piece of paper with like, some gold embossed stamp on it. I will frame that thing if so. I understand the validity will last only until I leave the foyer tomorrow morning, but considering there isn't actually any community transmission of the virus here at the moment, I think I should be safe? It's going to be strange getting onto public transport again, and heading inside crowded shopping malls. But intellectually I know this is orders of magnitude safer than any kind of similar situation back at home in the UK.

Home. I'm into that foggy liminal space of not knowing what I am calling "home". It'll be different with different people. And if you buy into that idea that home is where your people are, I'm still torn because my heart is far off across the seas. I've left it there very purposefully, but with no specific plan to get it back. I wonder if the thread will snap at some point without me actively cutting it. That will hurt, I think. But I watched the Freeman documentary last night and I recall my first sojourn out into the English countryside and really getting a ghostlike insight into the idea of belonging to a country. My mind dreams in ochre and yellow and eucalypt colours. Part of my being belongs to this place, and in that sense I am glad to be back to this island home. 

Quarantine diaries: day 12

 I am glad I didn't start this off with a countdown. I mean, I kept a list of the days and numbers to tick off (like in prison, as my dad pointed out, although it should have been scratched into a wall rather than written out on hotel paper), but it was a list TO 14, not downwards. A count up, rather than down, to steal a phrase that was intended to lessen exam anxiety for kids. But now it's so very close to the end, and I am making necessary plans for how I am leaving and what I need to do afterwards, that countdown feeling is inching its way into my brain. Simultaneously excited and also apprehensive, I know that I should be busying myself with logistical details, but there is still so much actual time and I am finding it harder and harder to convince myself not to order massive banquets to the hotel room (yolo, right?) and lay around glorying in this enforced 5-star hotel stay. 

It is possible I have slightly overdone the fitness workouts. My joints are mildly unhappy with me, and it doesn't help, I suppose, that they don't have the regular but incremental lubrication of incidental walking around to get to things. Its absolute stillness (how much movement does needlework take?) and then extreme arms-waving, body-rolling, high-kicking, squat-repping, high-intensity action for an hour and a half. I may be getting too old for this...

The excitement of planning things and treating myself to chimney cake last night has given way to the realisation this morning that there are still two, maybe three, more days of this soft-humming existence. I miss the sound of birdcall (and Aussie bird call in particular - none of that super sweet and vaguely polite British stuff), and the door slamming and engine revving of the suburbs. It's not silent here, and I can't decide if that would be better or worse. There is a neverending mechanical hum of machinery emanating from the city, the whoosh of occasional planes or trucks, and the sounds of the hotel - extractor fans, aircon, vacuums. But it all sounds distant and unrelated to me. There's nothing I can do to affect any of those noises. I can't even get away from them. Uh-oh, is this my lady in the wallpaper moment?

Quarantine diaries: day 11

 The end is so near I can smell it. Which is obviously a good sign, symptoms-wise. I think I may suffer some attachment issues when I get out - flashes in my most anxious moments (and there will definitely be some of those considering all the wedding duties I have apparently just been assigned) and longing for the safety and numbness I felt whilst inside. I wonder if there is some kind of badge all of us quarantine-completers. There should be one. Like a little lapel pin we can flash each other when we meet at cafes and stand much further away from each other than all the other Sydneysiders. 

But I am so looking forward to sitting on grass again and wandering around trees and moving water and feeling a breeze. As an exercise in encouraging gratitude, this experience has definitely worked on me. Never will I take that stuff for granted ever again, but I've just planned out my 4 days of freedom before the festival of sister's wedding commences and I am going to have to scrape for my nature time in amongst all the other normal-life chores. It'll be worth it though. To be back and safe and participating and with family is a bigger deal than past me would have ever been able to recognise. So that's a change. 

Quarantine diaries: day 10

 Realised how dependent my body is becoming on this routine I have set up. Dinner was over an hour late - I say "late", but the paperwork at the start did say that all meals would be delivered to our rooms within a 2 hour window each time, it's just that they have been so punctual that I had gotten used to eating at 1815 on the dot. My stomach was growling, I was getting hangry, snapping at people over the chat and generally feeling displeased and even more frustrated because there was nothing I could do about it. I had a few leftover jelly beans and plenty of tea, but they weren't ever going to hit the spot. And I started looking around on deliveroo, just to see what my options were, but none of them were going to get here imminently, and then I could foresee the daft nuisance of any deliveroo I ordered coming exactly at the same time as the provided hotel food and me feeling like a piggish twit having to eat it all at once. So I sat and stewed and then nachos and chilli arrived, with a can of what I am deciding to interpret as "apology pepsi" (because it is the first fizzy pop I have had since coming in here). Which I proceeded to skull and immediately regretted it. All those bubbles. All that sugar. But alls well that ends well and all ends well if I don't get a hanger-inspired takeaway. 

Today is day 10. Second swab day! Which means I get to see some actual humans for the first time in a long time. The mental health calls everyday are helping to remind me about how to talk to strangers, which is an important skill I was at risk of losing, and I did once see a man walk briefly through an office in one of the tower blocks opposite me (I don't usually because of a combination of lack of direct sunlight and quite darkly tinted windows all around me, but this once I managed it because it was just getting dark and he had his light on and I didn't yet). I think I am facing a lot of back offices, because I've only seen someone inside any of them that one time, and then there was the time a man came out to have smoke on the creepily empty balconies off another block. 

Hopefully this swab is also negative, I don't get any calls until day 13, and then I get the all-clear and go-ahead to arrange to be picked up by actual family. I don't know if I'm allowed to hug them still. I mean we will be living together and I have been given an all clear after two tests, and there aren't any community cases in Sydney, so it's not like they will have it (and they're OLD, so unlikely to be asymptomatic carriers, one hopes). But the rules are so against any kind of common sense that I don't want to make any assumptions. Elbow bumps for the fam it is. 

Quarantine diaries: day 9

 I think I'm running out of things to day. Last night as I was staring up at the ceiling I think I was running out of things to think. Which is ridiculous because there is so much that I'm going to need to rush to do when I get out of here that it would be in my own interest to figure out the most efficient way of ticking all those boxes, which requires thinking time now. But it's all a bit like travelling through molasses at the moment. There is a sweetness, and a bitter-sweetness to this time, its luxury, its emptiness, its safety. But there is a goal I need to get to, and things I want to do, and this time is slowing me down and holding me back. But it's getting closer to the end with every passing moment, so at least I can see it coming. 

Excellent meal for dinner yesterday - I am inspired to try it when I get out of here. It'll be a nostalgia eat for me ever after. Salmon fillet (I did think it could be trout for a minute) with creme fraiche, mustard, dill and caper sauce. And kipfler potatoes, which I am a big big fan of. How on earth will I cope with regular mum-meals when I have gotten used to lovely little cakes at the end of each meal? I suppose I'll be the one making them once my shipping container arrives with all the baking supplies. 

It will be so strange to go back to having deadlines and cutoffs to getting things done. Here, if I don't wipe down the tables immediately, it's not a big deal at all. Not even a tiny deal. If I don't get up by 7am (which is the arbitrary time I've set for myself), no one will even notice. There won't be any consequences at all - no washing to have hung, no dishes to have done, nowhere to have been late to, no one to get annoyed at my missing something. I fear it will chafe when all that comes back into force. But at least I have a baptism of fire ready and waiting for me. 3 days after I get out it is time to head inland and do ALL the sister wedding things, and I'll be scrapping for time to do daily yoga, let alone sitting and staring at a wall time. All the boxes I had dismantled in my mind, what with the no real teaching/work, no socialising, and the lovely emotionally open home situation in the last 6 months, will need to get built up and organised again pronto just so I can cope without bursting into tears every 10 minutes. But I will cope. Because that's what I do. 

Quarantine diaries: day 8

 Aaaaaand we're into the second half of this "experience". I took a couple deep breaths when I realised that halfway was a wonderful milestone, but that it also meant I had to do all of the last week again. It's not been difficult, it has just required mental discipline. I suppose, I could have just veg-ed out for the whole time, but I feel like it could have made the time seem much longer, and I would have been in atrocious physical condition by the end. As it is, I'm hopeful I have lost that unnecessary 5 kilos or so, and my flexibility, while it hasn't got noticeably better, has definitely not got worse. My left calf-hammy-achilles is still not right, but that will be a task to resolve once I can test it out on a walk further than one end of my hotel room to the other. 

I've got to rearrange my morning ritual. Sitting up in bed and reading the news might be a good way to slowly come to the reality of being alive in the world, but the state of the news at the moment means it is also making me cranky, depressed and frustrated. Between the virus and the second wave spikes around the world, the state of the (non-)leadership of the government affecting my mates back in the UK, and the ongoing and escalating nonsense sounds coming out of the US, returning the world does not fill me with excitement or glee. There must be cases of people really struggling to readjust after having lived for such a while in such a bubble in quarantine. 

Very oddly, I am finding the positive affirmations and self-care slogans being recommended on my instagram account (I blame liking the yogawithadriene account) being quite helpful. The old cynic in me sees the calming fonts and background colours and reflexively wants to scoff, but in my old age (ha!) I am seeing the wisdom in some of these sayings and fripperies. Perhaps it is emotional growth, or maybe a recognition that this stuff takes effort and matters, but I read, consider and integrate now, which I'm sure my 15 year old self would be up in arms about. 

Quarantine diaries: day 6

 I cannot believe how much life admin I still have to do. It's been 6 days, and I have scheduled myself two full hours in the morning to sit at the computer and work my way through correspondence, and getting my online life in order, and I am still adding things to my to-do list. There are addresses to change over, email subscriptions to cancel, life bureaucracy to research (turns out everything is dependent on me making an in-person visit to the RTA and print out many, many forms), and if I ever feel a lull, I can always catch up on the news. Was there always so much news in the world? It seems like everyday is some life-altering decree or data that sends life on another tangent. 

I feel like I must be losing some of this lockdown weight. I know too many people who have what they call "unhealthy relationships with food" and some kind of body dysmorphia, to feel entirely comfortable discussing weight and food, but the simple fact is I ate far too much and too richly over the last 6 months, with the completely viable excuse that it was one of the only ways I could get any kind of endorphin rush, and now I am the heaviest I have ever been in my life. I do not want to be "thin" and realistically know that even "fit" is too much for me to maintain with my lack of interest in all things active, but I would like to lose a bit of this wobbly spare tyre that has taken up residence. Between the controlled meals, lack of snacking, boredom drinking (of water!) and discipline in my exercise (which started off as a mental health pursuit, really) I am hoping to get down to at least pre-corona levels by the time I finish my 14 days in here. One can hope!

Film review time: The Devil All the Time. First, the good folks at Netflix Party ought to prioritise being able to share videos across different types of devices. Not everyone is using a laptop. Next, the film. It was a long time before the trailer stars appeared in the show, which wasn't bad or good, just, noticeable. Plenty of Peter tingles and admiring Tom Holland's profile/silhouette, and R. Pat would make an excellent Randall Flagg if he had just a little more glower in him. The ending was a bit meh. 3 stars. 

Quarantine diaries: day 5

 It is a strange thing to go a day without any real external stimuli. I have become aware of the natural fluctuations in my mood - which beforetimes would never have affected me very much (too many things to do according to a schedule that involved others, so I am held accountable). If I felt a bit low, so what? The washing machine just beeped and it needs to be hung out, so I would have to go outside and breathe some fresh air, and see the sun, and move my arms around stretching to get the washing in the right configuration and bending over to pick up fallen pegs. All of which would have solved the low mood issue. Now, I feel low for a brief moment and my thinking mind latches on to it and catastrophises to the point where I end up like "Sadness" in Inside Out and cheek down, arms beside me lying on the floor. 

I miss the hoover. I'm too much of a crumby, long-haired soul to be OK with living on this carpet for two weeks without being able to pick it all up off the floor. Lack of yoga mat means any kind of chaturanga ends up with me becoming hyper aware of the bits on the carpet. 

Meantime, the food is becoming the highlight of the days. Breakfasts are consistent and simple, but with something sweet that I've been saving for after as my morning tea (such an important meal of the day!). Granola and assorted cereals are reminding me of the boring but reliable porridges I was eating whilst working (god, that seems like such a long time ago now). Lunches are a bit of a mixed bag. I'm preferring the assorted salads, and I am terribly glad I am not a fussy eater or have any allergies. Dinners are the most exciting - there have been a few duds, which makes a good hot meal even more of a treat. And somebody knows the importance of pudding because there is always some exquisite little cake (well, I'm sure it starts off exquisite - they tend to smush against the walls of the little containers they are packed in, and goodbye carefully piped cream garnishes). All in all I feel like I am eating recommended portions of things, which is a novelty for me. Fingers crossed that between that and the jumping around I can get myself to a size I'm happier with - this spare tyre needs to go!

Quarantine diaries: day 4

 Subtitle: flowers and breakfast cereals.

Blah day yesterday. I think the excitement about being able to move my body in multiple directions of my choice (which probably explains all the dance and exercise enthusiasm) has worn off a bit. My glutes have got lockdown soreness - combination of overexertion in a short space of time followed by hours upon hours of sitting down. 

Flowers arrived yesterday, and the hotel was good enough to send up a vase, even though the lady on reception had to double check I was allowed. The smell is reminding me that smells exist, and the natural world is still out there somewhere, seeing as how I can no longer access any evidence of this. Also reassures me that I haven't got that anosmia symptom. I did get a little paranoid that I had a little cough yesterday, but when I think about it now, I coughed maybe 5 times and then turned the aircon to a higher temperature and put some socks on and I was fine. Being stuck in my own head is a strange way to force me to get to know myself better. 

I need to be careful to choose my entertainment carefully as well. BBC's the Repair Shop is definitely a good idea, as was the ABC's version of Back in Time for Dinner. Family-based positive kindness with a historical slant, and a focus on the tangible evidence of the resiliency of the human spirit is absolutely what I'm needing, even in the background, at the moment. Netflix art-house-style films by Charlie Kaufman not so much. I'm Thinking of Ending Things is not the weirdest or most depressing film I have ever watched, but because of the situation I find myself in, it left me profoundly disconcerted and pondering existential reality and that is So Not What I Need right now. Leave that for rainy days boozing it up with a bunch of friends over a board game, or sunny days lounging around on picnic tables at the beach. NOT when I'm stuck seeing no human faces for an extended, mandatory period of time. 

Then there was the aforementioned aircon war I had with myself. I don't know if it is because my own body temperature fluctuates during the day, which sounds plausible, or because I am so bored I need to pick a fight with machines, but I CANNOT seem to get the aircon to a comfortable temperature. I go from wearing PE kit to needing socks and a blanket and I am trying to manage the temperature depending on my activities but failing miserably. It feels like I am starting to miss fresh air and sight/feel of grass. Even whilst in full lockdown in the UK, with my lack of balcony or outdoor space, I could still open my windows and dangle my feet outside. I was still watering my little herb windowsill and still could complain when it was too hot/too windy/too rainy. This hermetically sealed room gives me the tiniest insight into, I don't know, submarine or ISS living or something. 

Well, that was dramatic. I'm blaming quarantine. 

Quarantine diaries: day 3.

 I sorted a VPN and BAKEOFF! And more importantly, BAKEOFF CHAT! Getting up at 5am was no biggie (I think I've got some lingering jetlag that I am using to my benefit while it lasts), and then it was nice to do something normal. Admittedly it was all prefaced with the distinctly ab-normal PM's address, from which I took the message that it was all our fault that the virus was still hanging around, and Johnson was a bit fed up with the whole situation and here are some new rules for us plebs. The show was everything we need and the "bubble" that the production organised means that hugs and tastings are as they were in pre-covid times, which is amazing.

Had my first-of-two swab tests yesterday and can attest that the stories I have heard are all true and it is very quickly done, but distinctly uncomfortable. I thought the lady was trying to access my eyeball via my nostril. Hopefully I get no call, which is the all-clear. 

I am enjoying the lack of decisions to make. The lockdown followed by quarantine (which is an escalation of all lockdown rules) seems to have bestowed upon me a pleasant sense of learned helplessness, which I know should be a terrible thing, but fighting it at this point seems not just inefficient, but counterproductive. Who am I going to fight about it? It frees the mind a bit. I guess I could use the freedom to do something more creative, but wallowing in a metaphorical mental bath of nothingness is super comfortable. 

Racing to get pants on after the knock yesterday, I had the excitement of both catching my food delivery lady in the act, as well as saying hello to the swab nurses. Those may be the only 3 people I see until day 10. I was accused of swotting up on the names of all the bakeoff contestants (usually we use incidental nicknames until about halfway through the season), but I think my lack of human interaction recently means that my monkeysphere has vacancies and my tv friends are just slotting into them. Going to the wedding in 3 weeks may be actually overwhelming. 

The theme of yesterday was "bureaucracy". I have about 3 errands that can only be run in person at an RTA (or whatever they're calling them now) in order to get my life restarted here. I feel unproductive, but not for a lack of trying! 

mantlepiece

let all the time go
to the man in the tower on high
there is no hope in loving and
no hope arising to the blue sky
but if you know
then it comes from the
clock on the mantlepiece

why do the children laugh
when the world is in trouble and pain
oh if memory's a curse then why live it all again

and it ends
but in the time of the rainbow's sigh
will we all meet
and tremble at the
flower pinned to your ear


fly fly fly
over
time

measuring cups of grain
follow the road that leads to me again
purchase the man in the silver scarf
make sure that he delivers the heart
to the
scuff-mark at your door.

munch

no no no no

in the blackness, i walked past the neon green sign.
it tells me about the steeple and the minaret
and how they stand and stood.
the lady with the black hair and the grease-smeared smock
asks me what it'll be
and i look up at the sky and
decide.

i push the things to one side,
clutter and muck left behind in the rush.
the counter lasts all of two minutes
and i try not to lean on my elbows.

cannot help but peer around,
craving the fire that would put out all the rain pattering down.
the girls beside me have a wet umbrella
which matches the sheen on their used plastic jackets.
i smile at the old man as he pulls up across
and try not to stare at the unshaven boys
in their boisterousness.

could i sit here for hours
imagining - extrapolating - the stories in the hubbub around me
the whispers and tales of woe
the giggles and covert glances
and all the moments lost to a strawberry milkshake
or a banana split
with extra chocolate sauce and no walnuts.

get a little closer and meet her eyes as she pushes at me.
they'll never get me.
an island in a sea.
the stream of soda swishing
around
and sandwiching
the sounds.

for the trek out side is for later
and the music will hit my face
but until then,
munch.

rain

his jaw was cracking as it slipped over mine
my arms reached out to pull the knife from his back
when the tide is frozen on these ancient creatures
i watched the sunrise tell me all the things it had to say.

purposefully opening the jars of bleeding pickles
ending all the summers that we spent along the beach
a child with two thin flowers pushed right up against his hair
mourning all the ones he couldn't reach.

parasites, they feed and anger everything i hold within
the tree that steals the baby from right underneath your nose.
and if the patter of the rain against my brow was stopped
i feel sometimes as though i never knew you.

inexplicable

but its gonna be alright this time...

once the sky began to shatter
all the moments wandering beneath
the open blue umbrella
watching the time.

then all the bears in all the world did look up and did say
why the morning smelt so sweet
why the sunset made me feel
as though i ought to weep.

running through a forest,
feel the eyes of anxious prey.

walking through the suburbs,
hearing all the calls to pray
for yesterday.

stop and ask me whether i had seen the black parade.
wonder at the touching of the self by restless youths
upon the brave
day.

glancing at the man with the uzi wrapped about his neck.
staring at the girl who stares out of the shop.
pursing your parched lips as the screaming tie gets on his soapbox.
helping the old lady cross the street,
an inexplicable desire to sleep.

pages

i have done all i can

the hotel is spinning above me
if i tilt my head at just the right
angle
i can see into the top windows.

there is a man holding a baby and the pieces of his broken heart,
a skipping girl who gently treads along the empty corridor.
a pail of tears for all the threads that were ended long before their time
unraveling from sir gordon's knot to trail away,
one yours, one mine.

the busboy bends to tie his laces,
a maid of honor checks the view.
and as the weatherman opens his laptop
the groom steps off the stool.

a visiting insurance salesman
here for the conference and the free feed
bumps into the foreclosed farmer while he throws the crucifix away.

many times the pretty maid with the pink flower in her hair
has snuck into the cabinet to meet the man who will decide her fate.
and as she closes her eyes and tries not to take in his air
she thinks of the little boy at daycare
with the second-hand blue jumpsuit and the wrenching stare.

a nervous man in an ill-fitting jacket is wondering if the price was right,
the lady in the tight black dress is wearing a wire
but she'll never tell.

the cranky squeak of the fire escape doors is offset by the noisy sign.
it tells me to keep it all shut;
withhold all information,
except the time.

the flowers delivered every morning used to be real, but now they are old.
the swimsuits they sell in their little shop came two years before us,
will never be sold.

birds used to visit,
but now that the journey is stretched beyond time and space,
they too crane their necks simply to get a glimpse of that mythical place.

and when all is finished, the check out time done
and sheets have been turned down once more,
i wriggle my toes in the dirt that's beneath me
and turn the pages.

stars

till moonbeams find you

right in the middle of the ocean
lay a man with a fiddle and a bow
trying so hard to lift a finger
to tell you

left of the shiny tower building
momentary lapse into his shell
the bug with the spray can in his forepaw
listening to the beat

sometimes the pounding of the heart is not enough
the scratches in the doorway meaningless
after thirty years
in the mud
pause to hear the crickets.

a tonne of empty buckets filling up my bags
the ancient breaking labour on the dawn
and with
every rising moon the battle starts
releases all the pent up tears to the stars.

moon

the future never

partly to help the unborn fear,
and mostly because of the sun,
i paused and bent at the knee.
i knew a war had been won.

i stopped atop the grassy knoll
and took in the broken view,
because if moments like yours could be relived
then perhaps his could be too.

the box with its music broke into my thoughts.
a scattered sill of glass
a relapse to things i have never seen
a taste of the sinful repast.

can i not ask about the moon hanging there?
i just want to know 'bout the time.
the deafening roar of your silence
i looked at my hands.

cuckoo

find me something more

i'll tell you
nothing changed my mind more quickly than an open shoebox
why did all the rhyming in the world just fly away.

in time the crazy laughter that follows you towards the jukebox
one day soon will end in prison and dismay

moments like the one you're missing echo all along these
mossy walls of disbelief
silver lining of used handkerchiefs

and as the cuckoo in his tower mocks a world of green and pink
i stand and ask if everything will end this way.