March 31, 2020

In Quiet Spaces

NYC. Springtime.

This year, it’s different.

I am home. In the heart of this pandemic, I am fortunate enough to stay indoors, sequestered in my quiet space. I am often seated at my desk, staring at a computer screen while surrounded by piles of precariously stacked notebooks and assorted stationery. There’s a box of fun-shaped paper clips (in my collection, now, there are clips shaped as whales, stars, and footprints). I’ve also taken to writing notes in differently colored pens each day to “spark joy.” So, today, joy is a bright teal.

Unsettling. Strange. Anxious. Surreal. Uncertain. Eerie. These are some of the words I find myself frequently using when responding to questions of how I’m doing or how things are over by neighborhood.

The sound of sirens have been puncturing the strange, foggy blanket covering the neighborhood. They’re abrupt and piercing, and I wonder if I’m noticing them more because it’s so quiet here. My eyes are drawn to the windows and I look out. And even, though there aren’t any hospitals in the immediate vicinity, I can still see a bright flash of light as an ambulance races down the street, several blocks away. The echoes of wailing sirens linger long after an ambulance has passed.

Unsettling. Strange. Anxious. Surreal. Uncertain. Eerie. There’s an uncomfortable silence that hangs tiredly on mostly empty streets.. When I look outside, occasionally, I’ll see someone and something. There is a woman, head down, wearing a mask and holding grocery bags on her way home. A man whizzes by, on a scooter with two bags of takeout hanging from the handles. An empty bus rattles past shuttered restaurants and stores. For once, the trash can down the block is not overflowing with litter.

On occasion, I’ll hear birds chirping.

Most of the time, though, it’s quiet. Very quiet.

And, in this quarantined quiet, I have all the time to think and think (probably) too loudly. I was so accustomed to so many sounds of life and living – the boisterous crowds gathering outside restaurants and cafes and the impatient drivers honking when the cars in front of them didn’t move fast enough when the traffic light changed. I almost miss the occasional late nights / early mornings when a drunken brawl would break out from the bar down the street. Not because I enjoyed having my sleep disrupted, but because, now in retrospect, it was people and loud voices and air that moved and was free.

This quiet is coupled with a sense of feeling helpless. What can I do? How can I help in this extraordinary challenge we’re confronting? There must be something. I know my “not doing something,” my “stay at home,” is that powerful something I can do, but yet, I feel restless. Trapped. Willing, but unable to do or be.

It’s quiet. 

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