quarantine diary
April 05, 2020
a university student in the spring of 2020
by celia glastris
I go to school in Boston.
I am in love with someone in Chicago.-
Today is April 5th, 2020:
Now I go to college at home, where I am from in Winnetka, Illinois which is a suburb of Chicago. 11 miles away from the person I am in love with.
My mom’s sewing business is making masks for doctors, she has a hard time sleeping at night knowing she’s sending her employees to work. My dad’s restaurant is changing its business plan to cater to online delivery apps. I am writing a research paper. On Tuesday in my Zoom class we will have peer reviews. Every night at 7pm my family has dinner together. It disrupts my workflow and also my sister’s who is in med school. She is very patient with her professors right now because they are busy. Mom and Dad turn 60 on April 16th (yes they have the same birthday).
In Boston, we FaceTimed several times a day. I kept a list of things on my phone we fantasized about doing once I was home. Little things like being aggressively queer together in public.
Ha!
Nothing about our situation has changed except proximity and danger
Meaning sometimes I bargain with myself: --
Bargain—
Wow-- what a sad word.
(Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance).
Is this grief?
Our god hates you and me
It’s hard to assess the situation: when I do-- I feel loss.
Consider for a moment,
the feeling of loss--
it’s absence, taking over your body, so that nothing else may reside.
Instead of thinking, I follow the state’s orders--
It makes life simpler
I write my research paper, and go to my virtual drawing class(?) and stay inside
That’s what the power of control does sometimes, people need to follow rules.
People like me need to be taken control of.
I think I live in manufactured oblivion:
to keep from on one side,
-
reaching a state of total depression
-
One that I may be indulging in as I write this;
-
-
and on the other
-
Mania.
-
My mom’s friend Roxanne told her to vacuum the dogs, I think that’s what the sound coming from downstairs is.
-
In the moments like now that I sober up--
for a moment I feel like I have agency again,
I “could” leave my house to see it.
-
the bargaining stage
No. I’m supposed to stay away from you.
The same response I came to, with a comfortable numbness that I built for myself the last time I had one of these sober headed moments,
I retreat back into the chosen oblivion.
First I feel----
I-
;
It’s like showering with my clothes on.
Stillness in the ordinary.
Jeans t shirt underwear. Regular.
The water falls onto skin as well as fabric, because that’s how nature and physics work–– obviously.
Oddly the whole world feels like this
Loneliness solitude disbelief, collectively
Still (this time meaning regardless)
I sleep alone, just like all the other nights before the pandemic that I’ve loved you.
Tue
April 14, 2020
i took a break when i finished writing another essay and
went on a walk to the lake
to remember that I was alive
which is sort of a joke but it's not and we all know that
a man was on a walk too
hands in his pockets
looking up at the sky and the trees
is he going to the secret spot
it's paved now
ok I'll give him a moment with the water
let's walk up the ravines
should i cross the street ?
ok
'
"And I've found a pretty good way to put you into my schedule tbh'
Haha react
you're laughing at me
no i think it's funny
that I'm scheduled
wow
i spent so much time here
i can't wait to take you
i should put the mask on
7:23 pm
more people pull up to the secret spot
"Dinner time at 7:30"
you're in pain
i need to interview more artists for another essay
ok
Wed
April 15, 2020
Things I have done in this room:
-
Played dress up
-
Played with my barbies
-
Made friends playing barbies:
-
Kenzie
-
Alice
-
Ella
-
-
Became friends with the lesbians in my hometown:
-
Kenzie
-
Alice
-
Ella
-
-
Played connect four with Kyle Bertram
-
Learned Spanish at 2
-
Learned Spanish at 15
-
Played on an apple computer one of those blob ones. The apples
-
Made the dolls scissor
-
Played I mean wrote a paper on the phonological loop
-
Doodled with crayons
-
Doodled while writing a paper on the phonological loop
-
Procrastinated
-
Zoom classes
-
Georgia is in med school studying in here too for the United States Medical Licensing Examination
-
we are surrounded by dr. Seuss books
-
-
My step stool is gay
-
When I was younger it was rainbow but now I come home and it is gay
-
There are three stools:
-
Celia
-
Georgia
-
Carina
-
-
Those are the stools
-
The stools say our names
-
The letters in the names are blocks
-
You can pull them out
-
The letters you can pull out are different colors
-
they are in the shape of a rainbow
-
\
-
zoom lectures:
-
I have to move my screen so you don’t see the gay blocks
-
I doodle during the zoom lectures
-
Afterwards I write
-
I write in this room
-
That’s something I do in this room
-
I make up with an old best friend in this room
-
I cry over her Spotify playlist in this room
-
I write poetry in this room
-
I make art in this room
-
I do the statistics wrong
-
I flirt
-
Text
-
Tinder
-
Cy
-
I love cy in this room
-
We watch cartoons
-
ask for help from the school
-
consider pass fail
-
take statistics quiz
-
why do I have an A in statistics
-
took too much Adderall
-
wrote a paper on techno
-
therapy session
-
-
play dress up
-
play dress up
-
play with dolls
-
play with dolls
Thu
April 16, 2020
i shared my screen with my therapist to explain what i did yesterday
my mind was all over the place
My hair has grown so long. It's ridiculous.
The whole point of this haircut was to look like myself.
It doesn't sit right in any way.
I sort of want to grow it out to see what happens,
but it makes me feel like I'm just waiting.
Like this time isn't valid.
Doesn't count.
It's weird because in some ways I've never felt more like a guy with this untamed hair, and yet for the first time since I was 16 it can be put up into a real ponytail.
On a similar subject, I'm growing my nails out.
We will (we were going to) wait fourteen days. Then when it (was going to be )safe clip (we were going to) clip them off together . Again, another part of myself,
something we choose
to manicure to play a part,
what's the point. I mean it doesn't feel as good for me.
But it doesn't matter. Except I can barely type.
Extraneous body things that grow tell time.
I will return to this after I write another essay.
And when Celia feels up for it.
Tue
April 21, 2020
Tue
April 21, 2020
Took this on Saturday.
I look like the fucking prince from Shrek
Oh my god
tell me to my face you think I look like a girl with this long hair
Thu
April 23, 2020
I've been writing so much I've been so stressed out. I started playing Stardew it helps!
Finally writing the paper on ethics of performance and a call for a reform in its practice and education. I don't like the draft that I wrote so I have to do it again. Here's the best sentence that I wrote: which is sad because it's not that good:
It is tragic and shameful how fitting this event is as an allegory for the current nature of performance art as a medium.
I can't explain what I am talking about because I don't want to disclose personal accounts of art I have seen quite yet without careful consideration, but do you see how that sentence is weirdly structured? It could be edited down,
how fitting this event is as an allegory for the current nature
that could probably be said in like one word
vom
oh writing.
you torture me! :)
Tue
April 29, 2020
Zoom Interview
Artist: Sophia Isidore
University: NYU
Location: Brooklyn
Pronouns: She/her
