PANDEMIC BRINGS US TO PANDEMONIUM, not the center of Hell—Pandemonium in Milton’s Paradise Lost—but tumult, chaos, the upending of our quotidian lives due to the infernal virus, on which we have conferred the somewhat majestic title, Novel Corona Virus-19. Normalcy is a far-away country, and even with all its attendant and even discordant notes, seems like a paradise lost, indeed.

With New York as the dateline, I write an online column, “The Artist Abroad,” for the U.S.-Canada section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the Philippines’ largest English-language newspaper. I thought I would ask a number of friends living in different parts of the globe, briefly, how they were dealing with this radical altering of their—our—lives. The dispatches were spread over a three-part series and first appeared in the Inquirer. Here they are, with some additions for CUNY FORUM.

New York—My wife Midori Yamamura and I now teach online, our students reduced to thumbnail videos, us too, of course. Zoom has become the preferred method of online communication, not just for classes but for almost any other social gathering. It’s as though we are all whirling in space, encapsulated, our abodes fortified as much as possible against outer space.

We are thankful that our rear windows look out onto our co-op’s backyard and a community garden that used to be, so we’re told, a family plot. (Hmm, I just noticed my referencing of two Hitchcock films.) The bare branches of the trees seem like a network of nerves against a grey sky, of T.S. Eliot’s “patient etherized upon a table.” For our resident squirrels, these branches serve as their highways, and even trampolines, as they effortlessly leap from branch to branch. Very soon these trees will be green, harbingers of hope.

In the hallways our appetites are whetted by the delicious aromas of meals being cooked. We have seen more of our neighbors in the past two weeks than we have in quite a while. We talk (usually at a distance now), and on our co-op electronic bulletin board useful tips are shared, help proffered.

Midori and I make sure we go out at least once daily, using the nearby school playground, empty of kids but kept open for the community, for some light jogging. Afterwards, we head over to Espresso 77, a local café that has benches outside where we can sit and drink our cappuccinos. The pleasure to be had in such a simple quotidian ritual is inestimable!

People seem friendlier, in a city where smiles are at a premium. Here in a corner of Jackson Heights, Queens, for now the center holds. I asked a few friends living in various parts of the globe if they could send me mini-essays about what life is like where they are. This is what they said:

March 20, West Coast poet Eileen Tabios
I live in a rural, mountain area in California. Living with wildfires and earthquakes actually prepared us. We had stocks of food and N95 masks at the ready. We’ve already shipped spare masks to friends in New York once their stores ran out of stock. This doesn’t mean we didn’t go prepper-shopping when we were able to. We’re the only ones that I know of who stocked up on vacuum bags, which is to say, I believe this issue is not a matter of weeks but months, and I’m looking over effects of supply disruptions over the medium-term, not just short-term. As well, for years I’ve worked at home, which means I’ve been practicing social distancing for awhile and so it’s not an issue for me.

What is an issue is the effect of this crisis has on hourly workers with minimal health care coverage, of which many work in the agricultural fields surrounding us in wine country. We’re also concerned about our elderly neighbors. One of my friends helps them out and I made sure she had masks since she would be in contact with senior citizens. Crises test character and I hope we all show our best sides. Last but not least, as a poet I’ve received several solicitations for poems related to Covid-19 which I’ve rejected; I have zero interest in making this virus my Muse.

March 20, Eru Gibson, originally from Japan and now living in Los Angeles, California
My name is Eru Gibson, I am an actor based in Los Angeles. We are in quarantine at least until April 19, which means if we party or make a film, we will be punished legally. On March 14, I waited for an hour before opening to get into a supermarket. At 8AM, bread, rice, toilet paper, these things were already sold out. I have been trying to order delivery, but obviously there are not enough cars and staff available to deliver them. All filming is cancelled and so many people have lost their jobs. I do live streaming to connect with other countries, sharing information and cheering them up.

March 22, Fan Dai, Director of the English-Language Creative Writing Center at Sun-yat Sen University in Zuhai, Guangdong, China

“It’s very wrong, Mummy, that you don’t let me go out and play,” the three-something-year-old boy was crying to the point of choking himself.

“But there’s virus out there!”

“I DON’T SEE HIM,” the boy looked out of the window and sniffled, “I can’t wait to play with him.”

“Hahahahaha…” one of us in the same WeChat group wrote.

That was one of the video clips that saddened and entertained millions of Chinese families who had to stay home to prevent coronavirus from spreading, following the lockdown on January 23, 2020 of Wuhan, the city that’s been hit the hardest.

It’s been a strange period. Word games were played, new food was made and recipes shared, homemade shows went around as if there were a competition. I renewed a friendship that went dormant for over thirty years after sharing my anxiety of not being able to work with a long-lost friend. My husband finally learned to cook. I built a bond with an unlikely friend from Wuhan after I sent a message to inquire about him.

So much was lost; so much was gained. Life is fragile and strong all at the same time.

March 22, Writer and journalist Enzo Escober in Manila, Philippines
I’m one of the privileged few for whom the lockdown has only meant a reduction of scenery. This past week, I’ve been working from home. I often think about the laborers who’ve been sidelined by the government, yet I still find myself fixating, selfishly, on my immediate circumstances. While my work set-up has afforded me a measure of security, it’s also given me more time to worry—for my parents and grandparents especially. I won’t offer any trite musings on what is obviously a seismic world crisis, but if you’re anything like me, I’ll say that it helps to breathe deeply, and to think about the new system we need to build once human contact no longer seems so lethal.

New York—Espresso 77, the local café, closed down a couple of days ago, and so did Lemon Farm, the fruit-and-vegetable shop we really liked. Along with other small businesses in the neighborhood, both promised to open “soon.” Ah, soon! How soon is soon? That is the question. With the city now the epicenter of the pandemic in the country, and the country having the most cases of COVID-19 globally—thanks in part to the ineffectual, head-buried-in-the-sand approach of President “Less Than Zero” (PTLZ)—these businesses may never arrive at soon.

PLTZ babbles about this being a war, but still won’t invoke fully the Defense Production Act mandating that industries manufacture the “weaponry” necessary in the fight against COVID-19. As of this writing, only General Motors has been ordered to produce ventilators. In the meantime, so many will have departed, bound for that country from which no traveler has ever returned. Like Lady Macbeth, no amount of hand washing on his part can ever expiate his feckless, even criminal, posturing.

March 22, Novelist Reine Marie Melvin in Paris, France
After days of rumors, President Macron declared a nationwide lockdown on March 17, for an initial period of two weeks. We know it will last much longer. Every night at 8PM, people appear on balconies and clap for medical workers. In Montmartre, minutes before 8PM, neighbors open their window and play loud music: Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” and Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’Amour,” resonating in the lamplit night through empty streets. Paris’s beauty seems both shadowed and intensified by the threat of illness and death. Only “essential” shops and services remain open: groceries, pharmacies, some banks, tobacco shops and bakeries. Schools are closed. People have been ordered to work from home whenever possible. We are allowed to leave our homes, with a certificate, only briefly and for a few defined reasons, such as urgent medical care, grocery shopping, family-related emergencies and solo exercise. Police check certificates in the street.

The country faces a serious shortage of masks, coronavirus tests and intensive-care facilities. People are getting sick and staying home. Many who call the government hotline or emergency medical services can’t get through. Only those with the most severe symptoms are taken to hospitals, the only place where they can be tested. The feverish excitement of the rumor-filled days before lockdown has given way to fear, almost palpable in this deserted city. We are told the epidemic will soon get much, much worse. Many will die.

Parisians are kind again. They telephone older neighbors, friends, family. They offer to shop for those at risk. Friends organize virtual coffee dates or cocktail hours. Our pleasures seem both frivolous and distressing, an ominous mask to hide our helplessness. Paris is not only empty, but silent: no cars, no motorcycles, only the occasional siren or birdsong. In the midst of lockdown, spring and sunshine arrived. Yellow, red and violet flowers explode in deserted parks. Trees have leaves again. Lovely, lively, insouciant Paris has come to a standstill. Fear is everywhere.

March 22, Artist Agnes Arellano of Blue Ridge B in Quezon City, Philippines
Yesterday, Sunday, our barangay [village] organized a pop-up talipapâ [impromptu market] for us in the big covered court where the villagers play basketball, volleyball or badminton, and where Billy and I do our morning tai chi workout and its requisite one hour warm-ups.

There used to be just a little tent selling organic fruit and veggies (and heavenly frozen langkâ [jackfruit]) from Batangas. Yesterday they were selling all kinds of veggies, plus chicken, eggs, fish, and rice. In one corner there was a table selling frozen carabao milk and yogurt. Yum… Nearly all the residents were wearing masks that the barangay staff had previously distributed house-to-house, patiently waiting their numbered turn to be seated on plastic chairs spaced one meter apart as per social distancing rules. Some carried red plastic baskets which only last December were just filled with Christmas goodies.

It’s summer here, and the hours around noon can get unbearably hot. The mango trees are heavy with young fruit, and the breeze occasionally blows little ipu-ipo [whirlwind] of dust from the parched earth. My seasonal bungang araw [prickly heat] is back with a vengeance on my neck and chest.

Many of us follow the lockdown rules but we are still allowed to practice our tai chi in the court. Basketball groups are no longer allowed. Residents of [Blue Ridge] A cannot enter [Blue Ridge] B anymore. Early evenings when the heat has subsided, many of us take a walk around, exchanging news and pleasantries. Thus far our village is safe.

March 27, Poet Priya Sarukkai Chabria in Mumbai, India
India is in lockdown. Migrant worker families are walking back to their homes, sometimes five days away. No transport is made available for them. Though the underprivileged tragically face maximum distress, such suffering is unacceptable. How are we, as a nation, coping? Since the contagion isn’t localized, will the government contain the spread of a seemingly uncontainable virus through cramped urban sprawl in city after city? What will happen to the economy and livelihood of millions? When normalcy returns, what fallout will our sudden obedience to government diktats have on India’s diverse cultures and already tattered democracy? Will people cede more readily to clampdowns on political freedoms, and accept excessive surveillance?

Or, after this experience, will humankind rise to greater harmony, nationally and globally? Could revisioned ways of social interaction and artistic expression arise? Could self-isolation lead to more creative approaches to the self, when isolation perhaps takes on shades of introspection and greater kindness?

In this imposed silence, for the privileged, colours seem to brighten, distant birdcalls are more resonant, time seems to become translucent. The eye traces the outlines of near things, small things, in stillness.

In the heart, a sea, not at peace, but vast. While the horizon glows through the mist. So I seem to see.

New York—I just learned that the word “quarantine” is derived from the word for “forty”—quarante in French, quaranta in Italian, and cuarenta in Spanish. Forty days was the period during which a ship, arriving at a port and believed to be a carrier of contagion, was prohibited from having anyone disembark. During this pandemic, we’ve seen that scenario with a number of cruise ships, most notably, the Diamond Princess.

The thing that disturbed me about the media’s coverage of the affected ships was its almost exclusive focus on the passengers—privileged middle to upper-middle class, and, for the most part, white. Virtually nothing was written about the crew, mostly people of color, and their plight. They were most at risk. The paucity of reportage on them made it seem that they were expendable.

The captain of this ship of state (with sincerest apologies to captains), PLTZ, has that mentality. How else can one interpret his assertion that if the number of deaths due to COVID-19 plateaus at 100,000, then he will consider his administration to have “done a very good job.” To view these deaths as proof of a “good job” is simply obscene and yet another damning proof—as though anymore were needed—of his utter incompetency and a complete and total lack of a moral compass.

The neighborhood of Queens with the most number of COVID-19 cases, the epicenter of the epicenter? Corona!

April 6, Poet Mags Webster in Perth, Australia
The suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, can be quiet at the best of times; and if this extraordinary period proves to be among the worst of them, then these suburbs could have been custom-built for quarantine. Mine borders one of Perth’s two rivers, and is full of 1950s brick and fibro bungalows and twenty-first century concrete castles. I live in one of the 1950s houses; I can hear my next-door neighbour sneeze (loudly), and practice her flute (enjoyably). Goodness knows what she’s been making of the sounds coming from my place lately. Having been regularly tested in times of stress or celebration, my kitchen happens to make a superb disco-for-one. Proximity to the fridge (vodka and beer), non-slip floor, plenty of percussive surfaces, and a festoon of flashing fairy lights, and it’s Saturday Night Fever forever in the ‘hood. It was my birthday last week, and I was celebrating my 50th (for about the sixth time, give or take) on my own. I cranked the music up loud. Reasons to be thankful for the virus: in self-isolation, nobody can see you do the disco finger or the rolling vine. Unfortunately, however, they may hear you imitate Barry Gibb’s falsetto, but my neighbour is still speaking to me (via SMS). Anyway, my Studio 54 moment cheered me up no end. In these times of fever, I’d reckon there’s no better one to catch than Saturday Night (circa 1977).

April 1, Scholar and professor Cristina Juan in London, England
The last few days in London have been so sunny that it has been easy to pretend it is summer. In between manic scrolling through news notifications, FaceTiming with family and trying to finish a paper with yet another deadline, I have been time-lapsing photos of an iris spiking in my garden, amazed by its will to life, but hoping it won’t bloom before this is all over. Two days ago I started making summer drinks with Vino Kulafu. It is perfect for my make-shift illusion. Orangey-red, a cross between Pimm’s and Aperol, strong and sweet but, medicinal. And it reminds me of home. I brought a bottle with me from when I was last in Cebu, just a month ago, before all hell broke loose. I am oddly comforted by the fact that one can buy this for 24 pesos in a sari-sari store, and that it is named after a 1930s comic book hero. It is fifty proof, but with a sobering blend of inscrutable Chinese herbs: Wong Chin to keep my lungs strong, Sock Tee for healthy blood cells, Kam Kuk to give me a good night’s sleep. I am both slightly tipsy and hopefully healthy, while waiting.

March 31, Writer Trish Lim in Quezon City, Philippines
My friends and I schedule what we call e-numan [drinking] sessions through Zoom. We log in at the same time, our choice of beverage in hand. It’s not the same but we make do. The other day, one of my best friends lamented the fact that she would be celebrating her 30th birthday in quarantine. A day before the big date, we conspired to do a simple surprise salubong [celebration]. The plan was to send her a link to a funny video that was actually a Zoom meeting where we would all be online to greet her.

An hour before midnight, [the birthday girl] decided to go to bed. We all panicked and reached out to her mother who then shook her awake before the designated time. Her mother said that there was some kind of emergency and she needed to go online to talk to her best friend. Groggily, my friend logged in and saw the multiple faces on her screen eagerly waiting.

“Happy birthday!” we all screamed. A big smile spread on her face as we danced along to a YouTube budots [hip-hop] mix of the happy birthday song.

“What’s your wish for me?” she asked us. One by one we gave our response: dinner together at our favorite restaurant, tight hugs, painting sessions, good health—simple things we had taken for granted before the lockdown.

After chatting for an hour, we decided to turn in. We sang a final verse of happy birthday, took a screenshot of our Zoom chat for posterity, and logged out.

April 5, Painter and writer Ricker Winsor in Surabaya, Indonesia

The Blessing in Disguise
The big house is spotless / the marble floors gleam / polished by Lusita’s broom / swishing up a few dog hairs / almost as they fall

A tropical breeze blows / through the tall French windows / and rustles the fruit trees in the garden / Longan, Lengkeng, Lemon / and the new leaves on / baby Flamboyant trees transplanted from the park

We are home, staying quiet / protecting ourselves/ our close people,
and family / a grandchild and his nurse

Everything is peace and harmony / all of us sailing under the same flag / able to see the beauty around us / not running from place to place / chasing our tails

Such is the blessing in disguise / brought to us by disease / showing us how to be
and to know / the gift given to us.

The situation in Indonesia is not bad according to their figures. Not bad in our world today is 1,528 positive tests and 136 people dead out of 264 million people. But, of course, those are only the ones tested and nobody knows what the real figures are. Our big concern is what happens at Ramadan, when every working person in every big city returns to his/her village for the holy days. If the government cannot stop that from happening, it will be hell to pay. That said, from what I have observed, the equatorial belt of our earth seems to be less affected.

April 10, Art historian and professor Midori Yamamura in Jackson Heights, Queens

ZOOMing in My Dream
In the middle of the night, my husband woke me up because I was talking in my sleep. And yes, I was talking, speaking to a familiar rectangular square; yes! I was ZOOMing in my dream. My initial plan for the lockdown was to focus on the inner self, tidying up my daily environment following Marie Kondo’s advice. Reorganize my life by getting rid of things I outgrew was going to be “the life-changing magic.” I was also looking forward to picking Kellie Johns’ wisdom in her new book, South of Pico.

But all of my plans were spoiled and now, my supposed meditative life has been hijacked by ZOOM: 10AM ZOOM Committee Meeting; 11AM ZOOM Exercise; 4PM ZOOM Research Meeting, 6:30PM ZOOM Cocktail Hour; 9PM ZOOM meeting with an initiative in Japan. In-between, my mother, who has sheltered in place in Japan, video calls me intermittently. A sheer flat screen on my desk is my only connection to the world. Worse still is finding myself browsing through images to embellish my ZOOM backdrop.

The current pandemic crisis will physically and mentally change our lives. By the end of the lockdown, we will find ourselves in a situation worse than the Great Depression. There will be countless unemployed and bankruptcies, yet our attention spans are fragmented, and senses numbed, by information technology at a time when we need to create a new New Deal policy. It is probably time for us to rethink our days governed by ZOOM.