The Brain Fears Uncertainty
Sending postcards always feels like sowing seeds. Each morning during this chaotic week, I’ve started off by drinking coffee and writing five postcards. After I’ve written five postcards, I head downstairs and plant them in the mailbox, then walk back up the staircase and sanitize my hands before I come back into the apartment. Already, the postcards have started to yield results. I’ve gotten three postcards back and a letter. Isolated inside on the first day of spring, my friends’ words are popping up through the soil and waving hello to me.
As international borders close, our gathering places are shuttered, and we’re overwhelmed reading the news, it’s more important than ever to keep connected. I’m worried about the virus. But I’m more worried about our government using the virus as an excuse to enact racist and xenophobic and repressive laws under the shield of “safety.” This is the kind of political environment where something like the Patriot Act slips through. Keeping in touch and keeping each other informed about what we see, hear, read, and experience is crucial for not losing track of our values amid all the chaos. The postcards aren’t just about saying hi, they’re about reminding my friends and myself that we’re all connected in this big, wide world, even though our lives currently feel as small as our apartments.
To help people process and share their Coronavirus-lockdown experiences, I uploaded a PDF of my zine on how to make a zine and made it free to download and print out. Immediately, download alerts started popping up in my inbox from around the world. People downloaded my zine in South Africa, Singapore, Australia, Denmark, Germany, Spain, England, Scotland, four Canadian provinces, and all over the United States, from Boise to Charleston. I don’t know when I’ll be able to travel again, but my drawings are already out there, zipping around the world, across all those closed borders. Who knows what I’ve helped plant? Who knows what will grow?
My neighbors put out chalk for people walking by to chalk up the block as we socially distance. I drew with a chunk until it was ground down to a nothing nub (and then sanitized my hands when I got home). I want to walk by later and see what my neighborhood has drawn!
STUFF I MADE
I’ve been on a comic-making spree this week, because how else do you deal with these feelings?? Here’s one:
STUFF I LOVE
Universal healthcare, paid sick leave, and a rent freeze. What’s not to love? You don’t stop a pandemic just by telling everyone to wash their hands. What coronavirus does is shine a bright, cold light on all the problems with our existing systems.
Pickling! Making pickles gives me something to look forward to. As every single one of my 2020 plans is now cancelled, it’s nice to have *something* on the calendar. I’m currently making these red onion refrigerator pickles (very easy!!) and sauerkraut (slightly more complicated).
Buying restaurant gift cards. Holy moly. This is very bad for restaurants and anyone who works in them. To help support bars and restaurants during this wild time, I’ve bought a few gift cards to my favorite places in my neighborhood. I’m sure I’ll use them for takeout or in some distant future where we can return to restaurants again, and in the meantime, the places I love get an influx of money.
Ordering books for delivery! Why do we only call it delivery when it’s food? Many bookstores that have closed their physical locations are shipping books for free. If you’re experiencing a book drought, you don’t have to order from Amazon—email a bookstore.
Monterey Bay Aquarium Livestream. I’ve mentioned the beloved Sea Otter livestream before, but the Monterey Bay Aquarium is going next-level as the entire place is closed to the public. The kelp forest livestream is easily the most calming place on the interenet!
Plague doctor masks. Please, please, please, someone order a plague mask from Etsy, wear it to the grocery store, and take a photo. Thank you.
Audiobooks. Since libraries’ physical locations are now closed, this is the era of the audiobook. If you live in the United States, you can likely get audiobooks for free through your library’s digital services. Where I live, the library uses the app Libby—look it up! Here are my recommendations for five great audiobooks:
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah is an absolutely dazzling treat. It's funny, it's insightful, it'll grab you and not let you go. It's a joy to hear how Noah switches between languages so fluidly (he speaks 7!).
I think about Amy Tan’s book The Valley of Amazement all the time. The epic drama spans generations of women during a time of political and social upheaval in Shanghai.
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante was so transporting that I would look up from whatever I was doing and be surprised to find myself still in my apartment and not in the streets of Naples.
Every story in Ted Chiang's sci-fi collection Stories of Your Life is a spiral of possibility. I found myself wandering through my day wondering what would happen next and what happened before.
This book is difficult to bear, but hearing Mohamedou Ould’s Guantanamo Diary felt like listening to a poem detailing one person's life where many of the words have been erased. [redacted] becomes a line in the poem, repeated over & over.
WHAT I’M READING
I’m working my way through Daniel Immerwahr’s book How to Hide an Empire and it is BLOWING MY MIND. Above is a photo of the Philippine 10-peso note, which Immerwahr points out was the basis fo the ten dollar bill.
If you don’t have time to read the whole book, check out this interview with Immerwahr on the podcast Throughline.
SOMETHING TO DO
Check in on your neighbors. Maybe this sounds corny, but I mean it! Now is the time to get to know your neighbors, rather than just awkwardly close-lipped-smiling at them. I live in a fourplex and emailed the other residents to ask if they need anything and to let them know what resources I have that I’m happy to share (food, a printer/scanner, a car). No one has needed anything so far, but we’re in touch in case things get dicey. Some of my friends have put up signs in their apartment buildings or on their blocks with their email address, telling people to get in touch if they need support. Be the corny person who reaches out.
I'll send out another update soon. In the meantime, you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter. You can also support my work on Patreon and receive wonderful things in the mail. The archive of past newsletters is right here.