A Dispatch From Quarantine By Steven K. Howell
From the balcony of my apartment, I look out over a busy Charlotte neighborhood. In the mornings the sun rises through the treetops in the park just across the street, casting long shadows over an intersection always full of commuting cars and people walking to their offices. There’s usually a small congregation at the bus stop down the road, chatting and laughing as their day begins. But these familiar sounds of my street have gone missing, dissipating into an empty silence. Normally, I love the quiet; I cherish the moments when the only sound I hear is the wind brushing through the leaves. I grew up in the country, in the back of a small town subdivision, the type of place where you could still fall asleep to the evensongs of whippoorwills and the occasional barred owl. That’s a peaceful stillness, a silence that sits where it’s meant to be. But here on my street, this is a quiet that’s out of place, a silence born of lives being halted and interrupted. The best decision I’ve made over the last month was taking Twitter off my phone. The staggering amount of infection and death, accompanied by the incompetence and trolling that social media specialize in, beamed into our eyeballs for hours a day can’t be good for our health. You know what you need to know already: it’s going to get worse, no one is immune, social distance, and wash your goddamn hands. Give yourself some permission to tune out the rest. Our government continues to show its ineptitude and corruption of priorities. We were woefully unprepared to test early and seem even more unprepared to treat the sick. Many of our leaders have been negligent at best, corrupt at worst… Unlike where I grew up, it’s tough to see the stars in Charlotte, a sacrifice we make for living here – but you can at least watch the shimmer of aeroplane lights as they circle Charlotte-Douglas International. But with no air traffic, even the sky looks emptier than it normally does. I’ve recently been thinking about the town I grew up in, and not just the luminous night sky, but how this recession will disproportionately hurt rural and minority areas that depend on small business, where the recovery of the 2010’s already left most of them behind. It may be a while yet before I can even visit my own family back home, whom I miss dearly. This past month I’ve gotten great at making stew, a skill vastly underrated in modern life. The best part of cooking stews is that with a creative mind, no two have to be alike; turn your pantry afterthoughts and leftovers into something new. Cook down some onions, sweet potatoes, peppers, and ground turkey in a pot. Add some beans of choice and can of diced tomatoes. Throw whatever the hell you like in there. Season liberally with your own spice blend throughout the cooking process; I personally like cinnamon and ground clove. If you want to stretch it, serve it with rice. P.S. Always cook rice with a little butter – it adds a nutty richness and tastes so much better. Now isn’t the time to count calories. One thing I have learned about myself is that I hate working from home. I work with families and businesses to navigate seasons just like this, so thankfully I’m at no shortage of work to be done. But I’m an extrovert who requires verbal processing, accountability, and the movement of working in physical space with people to reach peak productivity… This is no small adjustment. I’ve been a runner, a generous term for anyone who attempts to “run” occasionally, for most of my adult life. I’ve taken to running twice a day to escape my building, as the hallways start looking more and more like The Shining. It’s reassuring to be able to step into a world of spring renewal, into green space that still blooms with the pastels of dogwoods and crape myrtles, to show me that the world still turns. I’ll gladly take a sinus infection over cabin fever. Over the past couple of years, I have been learning how to see thing differently. Being raised in the South, reading too much Faulkner as a teenager, and being a supporter of Arsenal F.C., pessimism is congenital. But I’ve been slowly learning to let go of thoughts that aren’t useful, like ruminating on the feeling that “happiness” is always elusive. Maybe some ingredient in the recipe has gone missing? That perspective wasn’t serving me anymore. What if all the ingredients of contentedness were before me already, like my lowly stew ingredients, lying around just awaiting acknowledgement? Maybe all of this is an opportunity if we choose to make it so. An opportunity to show warmth to our families we are sheltered with. An opportunity to give ourselves, financially or otherwise, to those in need around us. An opportunity to find gratitude in all things…
