Today’s Lockdown diary piece comes from Ross Sinclair, Wellington, New Zealand, for whom the term ‘essential service’ has spawned a whole range of new responsibilities.

My day starts early.  Usually woken by a ping from my wife’s phone or her tapping answers to one. It is usually around 5 am, sometimes as early as 3 am. Odd numbers. I find odd numbers much worse to wake up to than even numbers, as if they are going to somehow throw my whole day out of kilter. 

With these loud little noises, my wife is clearly breaking our pre-Covid-19 pacted of no work phones inbed.  

But lots has changed. 

And this is the least of it. 

I get up and make her breakfast and a coffee. I know she knows how to drive the espresso machine but when I am in residence, she insists she can’t stretch the milk. 

I am an essential service to an essential service. 

It is nice though, some early morning time together. I don’t see her much during this lockdown. She usually gets home late. 

She calls herself a public servant. She’s working on the policy response to Covid-19 as a shift worker because they have so much policy to shift. She tells me they used to take weeks to write a cabinet paper, stressing over where to place a verb in a sentence. Now it seems they have only a few days to stress over where to place masses of potentially infected people.

My wife leaves for work with all the other early-rising essential-workers, but rather than their day-glow vests and sports utility vehicles or buses or trucks, she’s wearing a power suit and driving a small EV. 

Very Wellington. 

My wife is so grateful that I’m looking after the kids and cooking and cleaning and tears up when she tells me this. She’s saving the fucking world while I’m vacuuming and she’s thanking me!

I tell her I’m proud of her and I feel empowered by supporting her to do what needs to be done. I don’t worry about it sounding condescending or cheesey because it’s genuine and one of Zoe’s many talents is taking a compliment.

The kids get up later but don’t expect coffee. They do expect sugar-coated cereal, somehow conflating lockdown with holidays and an increased chance of breakfast indulgence. 

If it has been a 3 am start to the day, I tend not to sugar coat my responses to their requests.

I think the neighbours would report lots of shouting from our house, if they could hear anything over the din of their incessant power tools. The fervour with which they are doing it themselves suggests they don’t realise that we’re in this lockdown for the long haul.

Of the five residents in our house, Luna the dog shouts the most. She’s just not used to sounds coming over the fence during the day. I recognise them as sanders and grinders and water blasters. She doesn’t recognise them at all, so she barks at them. And she barks a lot.

We are home schooling during lockdown. We had talked about me doing this if Zoe got a posting in the Pacific. Now I am getting to practice, and slowly getting better. I started off being more a janitor and manning the canteen, but slowly I am working my way towards teacher’s assistant. My ambition is, of course, principal. 

When the kids are busy, I catch up on emails and news. I find my way to a ‘human interest’ clip from CNN on YouTube. I cry and so does the interviewer. The news is not supposed to be like this. I stop it before it ends, like stopping a bad dream before it becomes a nightmare. I sit there remembering why I don’t watch TV. 

The day goes on: morning classes, lunch, afternoon classes, exercise.

The day ends how it began, just Zoe and me and her phone in bed. We listen to a podcast of radio news.  They say the Easter road toll was zero. No one could remember when that had last happened, or if it had ever happened before. If it had, I bet it was during the Spanish Flu. 

Ross Sinclair

Today’s Lockdown piece: Words of reflection from Phnom Penh and the magic keyboard of Steven W. Palmer.

“I felt a tremendous distance between myself and everything real.”

― Hunter S. Thompson.

Self-imposed lockdown, Day…what is it again, Priti? Oh yes. Day Thirteenty fortytweleven.

To borrow another quote (and why not, it saves me writing), Philip K. Dick said: “It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.” 

I think between Hunter and Phil, they have nailed this weird alternate reality we have not only plunged into, but plunged into willingly in most cases. Take a single Scottish exile with Cyclothymia (that’s Bipolar III to you lucky laypeople) and lock him away – voluntarily of course – in a large house with an equally large but fenced yard and watch the adherence to carefully constructed cycles of up and down slowly crumble.

For the most part, my view of the outside world is half-seen bodies passing my gate. For the other part, my link to reality is a slowly crumbling interaction with the rest of the world via social media.

Ah, the sword with two edges. On one hand, it provides a link to people you know and love. It can even offer respite in the guise of ever-darkening memes (at what point does it become acceptable to laugh at death?). But on the other hand, you are also subjected to a never-ending downward spiral of conspiracy theories whose madness, for a moment, make you feel totally sane. 

From that fairly predictable cycle of up and down, the world has shifted this cyclothymic writer into a chaotic unpattern (sorry, George) of morning “guess the mood” gameshows. If I can avoid social media long enough to not see the increasingly orange face of the Trumpoon or yet another 5G rant, then I might manage to make it to the coffee machine and allow that first caffeine – and obligatory accompanying nicotine – hit nurse me into either mild mania or mild depression.

Either version is preferable to a full-blown episode. I can try and find a point of focus – increasingly more difficult as paying work has disappeared – and coax my damaged psyche to deal with the day ahead. 

Then there are treat days. “What are treat days?” I hear you cry enthusiastically. Those are one of the two days I deign to leave the house as a hunter-gatherer. Well, more of the gatherer since mammoths went extinct, to be fair.

Fully masked and goggled, I mount my trusty steed and ride through the village, ignoring the occasional suspicious glance from fearful natives. Enter supermarket, use hand sanitiser, wipe trolley handle with wet wipes, use hand sanitiser again, then off for a trolley dash – at respectable social distance of course – that Dale Winton would have been proud of (for our American viewers, think David Ruprecht, for Aussies, think Ian Turpie). List ticked off, fellow shoppers swerved past, non-mask wearing people scowled at, I make for the checkout, replete with flexiglass screen to protect the staff…or is it to protect the customers? 

Despite the actual, real, truly tangible insanity of the supermarket, those little excursions represent a brief toe-dipping back into reality and sanity. As you ride in the – lighter than usual – traffic of Phnom Penh, you can, just for a brief 5 or 10 minutes, pretend that we are not all trapped in a maelstrom of fear and uncertainty.

You can pretend that you are going out for some beers tonight, maybe a game of pool, go for some nice food, flirt with the waitress, joke with the motodop drivers, gaze at the intricacies of social intercourse on the riverside, all those stupid little things that we took for granted…

I want those stupid things back.

“To complain is always non-acceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”  Eckhart Tolle

Dr. Howl: A Lockdown diary entry from Faye Tsang, who recently returned to her native Canton, China, after an extended Cambodia stay, and found herself in quarantine.

Finally, I could set foot on the balcony of the hotel room and freely inhale fresh air, and then be on my way home real soon. Hearing the suitcase wheels rumbling downwards the sloping path leading to the lobby, I said to myself, “That’s it… a 14-day mandatory quarantine is over.”

It turned out not so bad for me though, a period of isolation at some five-star resort. Hotel-isolation was a special measure at the time to prevent Covid-19 spread due to many infected Chinese returning from abroad. Every one stranded in this situation would not complain too much for the luxurious and costly treatment arranged by authority, even if it had been confining and extremely boring. 

This is my hometown, Canton or Guangzhou city, which is more expensive for living than many other places in China. However, many other companions who flew here from Southeast Asia to transit still had to put up with this quarantine for the time being.

Being fair here, you pay for what you get, (‘yes, I have to pay) besides the pleasant accommodation in a tranquil and beautiful rural environment tuned with birds singing. The team of hosts have been working very hard to meet our basic requires – decent meals, mosquito repellent, toilet roll, detergent, and more, all except room cleaning and customized catering.

And there was another team of medical staff from the district hospital, who have been working very dutifully to carry out the day-to-day sterilizing and checking, including virus testing twice a day, which was free of charge for us, the observed objects. 

Friends of mine all seemed very relieved for me having successfully left Cambodia, where the spread of the epidemic was unclear.

Yeah so far, I was feeling very lucky, even when completing multiple road trips across Cambodia and a two-and-a-half-hour flight to Baiyun International Airport I seem to have avoided infection.

14 days was going very peaceful and as regular as military drills. Yet for a solitary soul like me, it was not much difficult to cope with, by use of reading, copy-writing ( from my freelance job) additionally with some help of an indoor exercise video that was introduced to me by a friend, and a shuttlecock – complimentary from the hotel.

The only humane contact was eye contact and Q and A happened during my daily physical check-up. Incidentally the two-week isolation was largely in gloomy weather, that reflects the moodier spirit of the Ching Ming customary calendar period. 

Thinking of the whole endeavour Chinese people have engaged in, especially the huge sacrifice of Wuhan folks, I gradually found the emergency rules of the authorities quite acceptable and practical, given imported infected cases have been increasing.

So you see, I am still able to adapt to typical Chinese socialism, even though I have stayed overseas for a long period.

Hopefully this global health crisis will soon be defused and overcome, through co-operation across countries no matter how different the social systems, races, or political agendas are.      

In the spirit of Defoe (A Journal of a Plague Year) and Pepys (serial London diarist of the 1600s ‘great plague’) HOWL offers you the Lockdown Dairies, vignettes from around the planet, where members of the HOWL family share their ‘Covid’ thoughts and experiences.

A ‘lockdown’ poem by Scott Bywater (Phnom Penh)

the crowds are thinning
on the boulevard of cautionary tales
but maybe a new name is in order:
the street of the last chance saloons?
the avenue of the end times?
deathpat’s graveyard?
(have I been reading Tom Robbins too much?)

if only beer wasn’t half as expensive
as soda water
I think to myself
as I scratch the unshavenness
I am wearing to blend in

Monday has not traditionally
been a good day to start again
but so many of the old rules
are gone
and why wait for Tuesday?

as the street dwindles away
into shutters and sentries

~~~

one cannot help being impressed
by the creators of email spam
who continue to work tirelessly
through this crisis

the internet is our mirror
both individually and
our society
all the things we are
are in there
blaring back at us
staring back at us
in piercing shards
and loud lectures

our mythic heroes weep silently
in their corners and their caves
they are spent; they did what they could
for now we are on our own

the bandleader up on the bandstand
keeps calling up new titles but
the dream orchestra keeps playing
the same tune

the shadow protagonist
his time called at last
can only hack his way through the scenery
in stubborn repetition of past roles
on the same backlot
high shimmering painted skies
and smoke machines laid to waste
as he stumbles forward
incoherently shouting lines
from his past triumphant speeches
once there was not a dry eye in the house
now there is not a house
not even a rickety chair

~~~

after the day-after-day morning bangclatter
the view from my window
is still and flatly hot
like childhood summer afternoons
when everything was distant
and the birds were the loudest thing
to be heard

when we walk the streets
the comparison with zombies
is hard to avoid,
with our mouth hiders
firmly in place,
eyes working overtime in exaggerated expressions
to overcome the facewrinkles that
complete our brief exchanges

all plans mothballed
all bets off
all opinions bleated
all encouragements obeying
the law of diminishing cares

~~~

the streetscape edited
erratically, but continually
the familiar faces of these years past
disappeared:
home means different things to different people
particularly when pushed

strange times, we nod sagely,
as we quietly rearrange our priorities
even as we wonder what they are

somewhere it seems
our alter egos
are off hiking in the hills
picnicking halfway up cliffs
waving bottles of wine
at a different sun
wondering where the glasses are
wondering where the corkscrews are
wondering where we are

all plans mothballed

all bets off

shutters and sentries

the dream orchestra keeps playing
the same tune

Scott Bywater – poet, writer, word raconteur

Julie Svay: Written from Rueil-Malmaison, the imperial city of Napoléon and Joséphine Bonaparte, near Paris, France, on lockdown J+32. And inspired by the emotions awakened by Saarah Choudhury’s Lockdown post: ‘Duet between a widow and her husband, Post 2020’

What words can I share after such lines … ?

Lately, someone blamed me for three simple words of mine, “I am fine“, because how can someone feel fine in such dramatic times? So many are in grief, fear or depression.

For reasons, good or bad, here we are; confined and little by little deprived of our freedoms – from going out (for more than one hour daily, authorized reasons only), from the warmth of gathering (so important to our elders), and to parks and places of green – our connections with nature.

Then, why not take the chance of these suspended times to reconnect with our profound beings? And through this inner journey face our shadows, and despite it all why not allow ourselves to reconnect with the beauty of each simple moment? And more than ever, the beauty of living?

It is springtime here, glycine and lilac trees blooming along the walls in the city gardens. Few cars pass on the usually congested and noisy roadway, allowing the breeze to bring scents of flowers and the sound of buzzing bees.

In the quietness of the evening I walk along the (forbidden) banks of the Seine. Sitting on a pier I send a prayer to its green flowing waters … a prayer of no religion but for our humanity, in the unexplained hope to fill the water with consolation and love; to carry along in its journey from the sea to the clouds, from the rains to the sources, and to the drinking water we welcome in our bodies.

Maybe it does not take more to feel fine. Maybe we can all learn, day after day. There must be lighthouses that stand before the dark and stormy sea, to remain us silently that there is hope until the Flower Moon light and the signs of dawn …

On my way back there are cherry trees in bloom, like the trees that you see in Japan, with an old Mercedes car parked beneath. It’s after a storm of thunder and rain and the vehicle is covered with pink petals, a ‘wedding car’.

Julie

April 17, 2020.

Hi, my name is Emily Moss and I’m 9 years old. I live in the countryside in Maheno, Oamaru, New Zealand with my mum and dad and my 6 sheep and Max the cat. I wrote this about my school and how lonely it might feel with no kids in it’s classrooms because of Covid-19.

Let’s see what Maheno School has to say about having no kids because of Covid 19…

EM:    “ Ruru Room how do you feel about having no kids in you ?”

RR:     “ I feel lonely, but happy because kids are not jumping on my floor!”    

EM:        “Wow sad and happy. It must be so quiet at Maheno school in the play-ground. Tui Room what do you have to say?”

TR:        “ Hmm…I can sleep in till 10:00am.”

EM:          “Thank you Tui Room let’s go to Pukeko Room, what do you have to…”

PR:          “Well I am not lonely because I have two butterflies. I miss the kids working, but they are safe in their homes now.”

EM:        “ Well thank you Maheno School. Stay safe and this is Emily Moss for home school news”.

Dr. Howl: In a case of the past echoing today a note from Barbara, Em’s mum: “Maheno School was named after the Hospital Ship ‘Maheno’, which took care of WW1 soldiers suffering from the Spanish Flu in 1919. The wreck of the Maheno is on the beach at Fraser Island, Queensland, Australia. The school has the original ship’s bell.”

A beautiful and powerful ‘lockdown’ poem from Saarah Choudhury (Siem Reap)

They say it’s dead now, this ghost town,
Milkshake and coffee shop shut down.
Only police on foot patrol.
Webs of wyrdness in control,
But what to do? 
But what to do? 

Oh there are flowers in my lungs 
Waiting to greet you when you come, 
Hypnotic heavens set ablaze 
The day angels upon you gaze,
And I’m still into you. 
I’m still into you.

This world is bruised and bitter-sweet
Like dancing flowers on the beach,
Where we used to laugh and run.
Life outdoors was so much fun. 
We’d watch each sunrise anew, 
We’d watch each sunrise anew. 

Oh there are flowers in my lungs
Waiting to greet you when you come, 
Hypnotic heavens set ablaze 
The day angels upon you gaze,
And I’m still into you. 
I’m still into you.

There is no time like the past, 
Who thought good things would never last,
Remember when the pink moon rising
We watched without moralising?
Now my world is blue. 
Now my world is blue. 

Oh there are flowers in my lungs 
Waiting to greet you when you come, 
Hypnotic heavens set ablaze 
The day angels upon you gaze,
And I’m still into you. 
I’m still into you.

Birds under my window sing. 
We like to think nature’s breathing.
In this isolated madness,
They only add to all the sadness.
Each day’s so hard to get through,
So hard to get through.

Oh there are flowers in my lungs 
Waiting to greet you when you come, 
Hypnotic heavens set ablaze 
The day angels upon you gaze,
And I’m still into you. 
I’m still into you.

Now we’re all afraid to fly, 
Afraid to go on late night drives.
The streets are quiet anyway. 
Mantle of fear’s the mainstay 
Yet I cling to thoughts of you.
I cling to thoughts of you.

Oh there are flowers in my lungs 
Waiting to greet you when you come, 
Hypnotic heavens set ablaze 
The day angels upon you gaze,
And I wait for you.
And I wait for you.

Saarah Choudhury

Published poet

Freedom, safety, joy, service, all the good things in life

In the spirit of Defoe (A Journal of a Plague Year) and Pepys (serial London diarist of the 1600s ‘great plague’) HOWL offers you the Lockdown Dairies, vignettes from around the planet, where members of the HOWL family share their ‘Covid’ thoughts and experiences.

Cambodia, Siem Reap: A ‘lockdown’ entry from Dr. Howl

The last night of December 2019: it seems an age ago now, a different time, another world, not a moment barely five months past. That night, with a friend, we found ourselves at Ms. Wong—as much of a hospitality institution as you can get in this town—with me enjoying a cool mojito as the festive sounds of Siem Reap buzzed around us. 

Had I heard of the virus back then? A strange sickness in a distant Chinese city that I had barely heard of and that I struggled to pronounce? Maybe, a rumour or a brief news piece, but with Australia aflame and football scores to consider its repercussions—what it would mean for me and the rest of the planet— barely registered on this, the eve of new years.  

Ms. Wong is closed now – a victim of the economic disarray that follows the virus like an evil twin. The friend from that evening is in lockdown, somewhere in Bangkok, unable to work, unable to travel. Today, on the last day of another new year—Khmer—Siem Reap should be buzzing. It’s not. After twilight one expects to see tumbleweeds spiralling down the dark alleys of ‘Pub Street’, with rats and lost souls the remaining vestige of the quarter’s wandering night-life.

Still, during the day, life seems cosmopolitan here compared with images from back home, the kingdom manufacturing a distinct take on Covid control. Currently we are in a holiday-centred lockdown, although the notion of where to place the ‘lock’ stretches to the boundaries of your province and not your back door. On the streets and out on the rural roads social distancing translates to three in a tuk tuk (chickens an optional extra) and ‘flattening the curve’ is something that a drunken reveller does in a speeding SUV.

In mood we seem to be on-hold, waiting for something to happen, spectators to an unofficial race – will we succumb to the virus first or will its economic consequences overtake us before? The local media provide us with scant details. While in Europe, the USA, back home, we read that the world is on fire, the ‘bug’ burning through people’s lives, the economy, friends and family. 

Last week, returning from work, I drove through the trees and ruins of Angkor. There were still people about—all Khmer, hardly a ‘barang’ to be seen—and they seemed happy, picnicking on the sides of the park’s wide barays, taking selfies, juggling babies and soda cans in overfull hands. And if one closed out everything else, if one concentrated only on this moment, you could forget what was happening beyond, you could almost imagine that you were back on a mild evening in late December.

. . . that the world was ‘normal’.

How will this all play out? I have little idea. But each day of good health seems like a miracle and, for now, that is enough. 

Stay safe, stay healthy . . . and keep on howling.  

In the spirit of Defoe (A Journal of a Plague Year) and Pepys (serial London diarist of the 1600s ‘great plague’) HOWL offers you the Lockdown Dairies, vignettes from around the planet, in which members of the HOWL family share their ‘corona’ thoughts and experiences.

First up is Greg McCann, rainforest memoirist and eco-wunderkind, who offers his thoughts from Buffalo, USA.

Only one thing matters: will my flight still depart on July 8^th, taking me from New York—the pandemic epicenter in the USA—to Taiwan? That’s it, that’s all. This consumes me. There are other things, of course, like my son, and the fact that I’m putting on weight—and that really irks me because I have a gym membership and, considering how unhealthy the food is in Buffalo, NY, I was doing pretty good as far as staying in shape over the past two years. I can feel the bulge now, and jumping jacks in the basement don’t seem to do that much; neither do push-ups or sit-ups. Maybe I need to do more. Anyway, I scan the news looking for glimmers of hope that things will turn semi-normal by July, and I still think they will. Anything else is inconceivable.

My friend just sent me a photo of my favorite Taipei sauna, captioning it with “It won’t be long now, Greg!” I hope he’s right. He has to be. The bars and restaurants are still open in Taiwan. You can eat stinky tofu and wash it down with a Taiwan beer on the sidewalks of the city. Sounds like another planet, but that was my life for 14 years, and it will be my life again if I can get the hell out of here. I called the airline because my boss said I had better budget in 2 weeks for quarantine if I want to be able to report for duty on July 31^st, plus a few days for a physical exam at the hospital. Airline changed my dates, but for a fee—thought they weren’t supposed to charge for that in these worrying times, but they did. Oh, and I have an ARC (alien resident card) for Taiwan, so even if foreigners are banned, I can still enter. The latest news says overall deaths might not be nearly as bad as earlier models predicted. Looking good.

And it’s not just Taiwan, but Cambodia and Thailand too. Because after I report for duty I’m supposed to be on another flight for my beloved Phnom Penh, and then up into the north of the Kingdom where I travel for wildlife surveying, and after that, back down to PP for R&R, and then a bus or plane to Bangkok, and then more jungle adventures in that fine kingdom.

Cambodia and Thailand should be OK by August, no? Is there anything else I should do besides some sit-ups? My son is on his third hour of Fortnite, or, actually, his first hour of that after two hours of some other game. But at least he gets to “hang out” with his classmates online while he plays. I hear them talking. Time to put on some coffee. It’s 12:40 PM, Thursday, April 9^th.