I was inspired to write this after reading Fran Lebowitz’s delineation of her day, so without further hesitation I present: a written and photographed record of a day in my quarantined life.
11am: I wake up desperately grasping at the last dregs of the warmth that sleep engenders; both the physical warmth insulated within the sheets and the emotional warmth that comes with being anesthetized by sleep to the myriad horrors that we call “daily life”. When entry back to that realm has been definitively denied until nightfall, I begrudgingly plug into the digital sphere by checking social media and offer my monkey brain to be lit up by the digital stimuli that has been engineered to monopolize my attention for profit.
12pm: When my hunger wins its daily battle with my laze I emerge from my cocoon of sheets not a vibrant butterfly embodying vitality, but more a limp moth with a chronic bout of ennui, disgruntled at having been forcibly evicted from perpetual inertia. I head to the kitchen to fix my breakfast then park myself in front of the TV, my inactivity of choice in the realm of the waking. In case you haven’t picked up on a pattern yet, the underlying philosophy of my daily existence revolves around pinballing myself from one fictional world to another until I slowly, subtly forget that I exist in this one. While the objective of some TV enthusiasts may be to just relax and observe a compelling narrative, my goal every time I sit in front of that light and sound box is to feel as if I'm vacating my corporeal form and floating into the comforting moving colors and soft sounds swirling beneath the screen. Call it what you want, I guess. Today I have chosen Curb Your Enthusiasm, as few things electrify me like a full-body cringe. I sit in silent deference to my patron saint of misanthropy and self-disdain, Larry David, as he confounds and infuriates those around him by antagonizing their revered social norms at every turn.
2pm: It’s the afternoon, which signals to me that it’s time to take the stage for my half-hearted performance as “a” “functional” “person” with “purpose” and “self-regard.” I brush my teeth while staring into my reflection contemplating the Sisyphian prospect of brushing my teeth and hair and washing my face twice a day until I no longer can, due to death. I emerge back into my room, which is likely more accurately described as an eclectically disheveled hermitage. I imagine anthropologists excavating it and hypothesizing exactly what strain of neuropathy would cause someone to accumulate so many empty bottles of pills, vitamins, and perhaps most embarrassingly due to embodiment of urban left stereotypy, kombucha. I stand with my hands on my hips like a disappointed mother surveying her depressed teenager’s room as if I am not personally and wholly responsible for the state of it. I muster the will to rearrange the configuration of items to resemble those of a mentally healthy person and hope that act of health will somehow reflect back onto me.
3pm: While ambling around finishing up my tidying I hear a crunch underfoot. I look down to see the broken remnants of my smoking paraphernalia, taken outside yesterday for a change of scenery, swathed in its tote bag casket. I frown down at this unwelcome development in my day. My plan for after I had finished cleaning was to hole myself in my mystical cave (bathroom) to embark on what I consider to be my own meditative practice, studying the smoke clouds as if to parse out life’s meaning from their contents. A new waste of my time is in order. I select a time-honored classic since my childhood: perching on my rotting wooden radiator and gazing at the faceless figures dotting the outside in silent contemplation. I feel my beloved analog form of social observation filling that empty feeling inside of me, whereas its digital counterpart only seems to widen it.
3:30 pm: Hark! Creative inspiration strikes in the wake of a passing glance down to my debased (literally: only the base broke off) paraphernalia. The clean break on the base means there’s a clear line of sight from the neck through where the base used to be; my degenerate telescope. I grab my camera from its bag, feeling somewhat satisfied that the death of my smoking piece will not have been for naught. Although it may have met an undignified end, it will be immortalized in my in-progress photo series of quarantine scenes. I turn my rock playlist on and set my camera’s focus on the blue sky with cartoonish white clouds through the glass neck of the bubbler, hoping to convey something compelling about how the brokenness and intoxication of our times can allow for a collective re-envisioning of the world we live in. I am gut-punched with the immediate realization that I’m just a depressed college student photographing her broken pipe in her childhood bedroom in a desperate attempt to cobble together a fulfilling sense of meaning to prevent further loss of sanity while in social isolation. I think that to make art one has to have enough pretense to ascribe visceral emotional symbolism to images yet enough of a sense of humor and self-awareness to be able to poke fun at their own pretense.
5:30pm: It’s 5 o’clock, which means the pleasant sunlight streaming into my room has been replaced with permeating darkness. In my box of light nine stories off the ground, I inexplicably concern myself with the most irrelevant of minutiae: Internet personality drama. I almost feel like a bad person for saying it but Internet personality infighting is one of the most soothing online rabbit holes for me to tumble down, not in spite of its frivolity but because of it. To immerse oneself in the most petty, meaningless interpersonal drama available is to fleetingly forget the crushing stress of knowing that everything on Earth is in dire need of fixing.
7pm: Dinner and back to the TV set, but this time a different narrative and ambiance. I’m watching Twin Peaks, the rich reds and greens of David Lynch’s supernatural dystopia flitting across my vision. My mother asks why in the middle of such a trying time for the country and the world I would choose to watch a show that deals often in the disturbing. I honestly don’t have an answer for her, except for maybe it’s because in Lynch’s universe some of the evil present is manifested by greater forces outside human control, while all of Earth’s evil is manmade. Also, the eerie yet mellifluous combination of jazzy music and dialogue and the depressed elegance of the pretty yet unsettling setting press just the right brain buttons to distort my background thoughts into distant static.
10pm: Back in my room, tired of ingesting information. Well, thoughts, it’s just you and me. I put on some music and stare at the glow of the lights on the cracked paint of my wall and ceiling. I stare at my reflection in the mirror with heavy eyes, reflecting on the prospect of being a brain piloting a flesh avatar through a living, breathing glass and metal labyrinth of other brains contending with that exact reality. I come to the conclusion that human consciousness was probably a mistake.
12pm: Bedtime. Before I scramble to find my way back to the warm womb of sleep, I quixotically check social media one last time just to see if I can find anything enjoyable or interesting enough to justify putting off sleep. As usual, I don’t.
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