Visualizing The Pandemic
A Covid Routine
Mitssiody
Vallejo-Castaneda
Mitssiody
Vallejo-Castaneda
A Yurt, A Field, A Dying Tree
We had a yurt and a field and a dying tree. We had a small building and bamboo growing and a single wooden bench. There was music and plays and laughter and occasionally we had apple pie. Sometimes we would take sugar across the field to the ant hill and watch them follow the trail that we leave, and squeal in joy when they do. We had a sunny patch of grass where we would lay our mats upon and talk and dance around and when the food would come out we would have picnics adorned with youthful joy. We would stand in the small galley kitchen all in a row side by side and would take up a job to help make lunch. I would push my way forwards past the breading and the coating and stand in front of the pot. Upon the chair, precariously balanced, I would watch the oil pop and fry and happily divide the meal across the plates. “Fairly” I would say, shooing the hands of my friends away and doing it myself. Then we would line up in the narrow passage and carry the plates out in all our grandeur and hear the excitement of everyone as we would set the plates down on the colorful mats. Hands would jump out to grab the food and I would join in the excitement of our homemade meal, basking in the sun and the joy of sharing.
“This is what I want” I would think “this is the feeling.”
The feeling refused to leave and for one last moment it was happy again, but soon the year ended and I could no longer find the joy in it. Nothing was the same, for a shadow cast across the grass, the tree finally died and the kids grew up leaving only the echoes of the past behind. The only solace I could find was in the smell of bread. We had a family and a portable grill and real American cheese. We had trays of pizza, red pepper and coke. There was peace and joy and kin and all you could smell was the bread and the dough and the vibrancy of our lives. In the kitchen our grandmother would stand, kneading the dough and rolling it out and we would sit at the table and watch her placing it in the oven. When they would come out we could see the steam coming off the top and you could see the smiles of our family as they grab a slice of hot pizza and find a spot on the floor or the table to sit, just to enjoy the meal. Burgers were just the same except they were made on the little balcony by a bunch of our uncles and my father and the children would wait in anticipation for the patties to be finished. We would sit together and I would see the way that we were held together, the way that these weekly meals solidified our relationships and made us happy, if only just for a moment. It was in those hours that I knew all would be well and it was watching my grandmother standing in that tiny kitchen that made me believe that food is more than something we fill our stomachs with, its culture and identity and something that is passed down wordlessly from grandmother to child.
It has brought with it a sense of peace, a sense of control. We have the power to manipulate the way we feel by being together, sitting over a meal. There were many other little moments, late afternoons and early mornings where it felt like the old days again. Where we would wake and have bursts of energy to cook and talk and laugh. Maybe it's not even in the meals that makes it so rewarding, maybe it's in the feelings that they bring. Our grandmother used to tell us to take care of the things that we do, that the past is gone and the future has not come and we are left with how we make our now.
Years later, when we no longer have the weekly meals and instead rely on the occasional visits. We no longer have those connections and feelings and we no longer eat the meals of our childhood. When the world wound up in the modern plague we were left with our home and our kitchen and overused recipes. We were sick of the meals that no longer felt like home, no longer felt like life and more of a chore than anything else. I remembered my grandmother and the things she taught me throughout my life and I remembered that time on the sunny grass and mats and I knew that nothing would change and yet everything is different. I needed to go back to and remember the things that made us happy, especially when our world was down in the dumps and all I could remember was the feelings that came with cooking and eating the foods that I grew up with. So I took it into my own hands and suddenly I found something that I never really knew I lost and I was happy while I was trapped. I started going through my memories and pulling up those happy moments and I knew the feeling was familiar because I had felt it before, and I was overjoyed to have it back.
Zainab Ahmadzai
We had a yurt and a field and a dying tree. We had a small building and bamboo growing and a single wooden bench. There was music and plays and laughter and occasionally we had apple pie. Sometimes we would take sugar across the field to the ant hill and watch them follow the trail that we leave, and squeal in joy when they do. We had a sunny patch of grass where we would lay our mats upon and talk and dance around and when the food would come out we would have picnics adorned with youthful joy. We would stand in the small galley kitchen all in a row side by side and would take up a job to help make lunch. I would push my way forwards past the breading and the coating and stand in front of the pot. Upon the chair, precariously balanced, I would watch the oil pop and fry and happily divide the meal across the plates. “Fairly” I would say, shooing the hands of my friends away and doing it myself. Then we would line up in the narrow passage and carry the plates out in all our grandeur and hear the excitement of everyone as we would set the plates down on the colorful mats. Hands would jump out to grab the food and I would join in the excitement of our homemade meal, basking in the sun and the joy of sharing.
“This is what I want” I would think “this is the feeling.”
The feeling refused to leave and for one last moment it was happy again, but soon the year ended and I could no longer find the joy in it. Nothing was the same, for a shadow cast across the grass, the tree finally died and the kids grew up leaving only the echoes of the past behind. The only solace I could find was in the smell of bread. We had a family and a portable grill and real American cheese. We had trays of pizza, red pepper and coke. There was peace and joy and kin and all you could smell was the bread and the dough and the vibrancy of our lives. In the kitchen our grandmother would stand, kneading the dough and rolling it out and we would sit at the table and watch her placing it in the oven. When they would come out we could see the steam coming off the top and you could see the smiles of our family as they grab a slice of hot pizza and find a spot on the floor or the table to sit, just to enjoy the meal. Burgers were just the same except they were made on the little balcony by a bunch of our uncles and my father and the children would wait in anticipation for the patties to be finished. We would sit together and I would see the way that we were held together, the way that these weekly meals solidified our relationships and made us happy, if only just for a moment. It was in those hours that I knew all would be well and it was watching my grandmother standing in that tiny kitchen that made me believe that food is more than something we fill our stomachs with, its culture and identity and something that is passed down wordlessly from grandmother to child.
It has brought with it a sense of peace, a sense of control. We have the power to manipulate the way we feel by being together, sitting over a meal. There were many other little moments, late afternoons and early mornings where it felt like the old days again. Where we would wake and have bursts of energy to cook and talk and laugh. Maybe it's not even in the meals that makes it so rewarding, maybe it's in the feelings that they bring. Our grandmother used to tell us to take care of the things that we do, that the past is gone and the future has not come and we are left with how we make our now.
Years later, when we no longer have the weekly meals and instead rely on the occasional visits. We no longer have those connections and feelings and we no longer eat the meals of our childhood. When the world wound up in the modern plague we were left with our home and our kitchen and overused recipes. We were sick of the meals that no longer felt like home, no longer felt like life and more of a chore than anything else. I remembered my grandmother and the things she taught me throughout my life and I remembered that time on the sunny grass and mats and I knew that nothing would change and yet everything is different. I needed to go back to and remember the things that made us happy, especially when our world was down in the dumps and all I could remember was the feelings that came with cooking and eating the foods that I grew up with. So I took it into my own hands and suddenly I found something that I never really knew I lost and I was happy while I was trapped. I started going through my memories and pulling up those happy moments and I knew the feeling was familiar because I had felt it before, and I was overjoyed to have it back.
Zainab Ahmadzai
Year of Stolen Memories
At the beginning of summer 2017, I wondered how high school life would turn out to be for me: I believed it would have been a nightmare, it was the complete opposite. We started off as students who complained about not being able to function without our morning coffees, to wishing we could be back in school. We all wanted the best last year of our high school experience, but we are now living it through a screen.
When we first heard about the Coronavirus, we all believed it was another media exaggeration, as we have stopped trusting the media long ago. The virus was a nuisance to hear about, more so when our intercession of our junior year was cut short due to cancellation of plans last minute. The places we finally were going to be able to go to with our friends, to enjoy our school days without all the assignments and hard work, were taken from us.
The last normal week of our lives was just how we always did it: attending school. The last wednesday of our junior year we got to spend together was a short day, and the excitement to leave to finally go home was over the roof! Hearing about the next two days off was like music to our ears, having a four day weekend was going to be the very best!
Until it wasn’t. We didn’t return to school that next week, or the week after. Our screens were the only thing keeping us together, yet we were miles apart from each other. The laughter of our friends, the joking around with our favorite teachers, all gone and replaced with the awkward silences of being in front of a computer all day long. We didn’t know that a quick goodbye to our friends and teachers, excited to just go home, would be our last in months.
After that first month of reality set it, we started to realize that the rest of our junior year was going to be spent being online, not getting to spend time with our friends anymore. Tables we used for lunchtime have been taken over by spiders webs to cover our presence’s absence. The trees that surrounded us would then let go of more leaves, wishing someone, just anyone, was there to step on them. Hallways that were overtaken with talking and jokes have been haunted by the silence we left with them. The anxiety we got when we had to present our soapboxes in class have turned into anxieties we’d get when we had to unmute our voices during our online classes.
We have learned to make connections with each other online, and our friendships we keep and have lost are hanging by threads of cable and internet connection. We have lost people in our life who we thought were going to be with us forever, but also learned to accept the one person that will never leave our side: ourselves. Just because we are home more than at school during class doesn’t mean we've forgotten what it meant to grow up during high school.
We start missing what we don’t have anymore, and all that’s left with us is memories.
Warm hugs and embraces we get from our friends are just replaced by the comforts of our bed blanket’s as any form of connection and affection are not an option anymore. The fun school activities we would have experienced are now nonexistent, and doing it online is just not the same. Playful times in the classrooms are now gone, chairs and tables having no purpose due to us not being able to be there anymore. Talks with each other about hanging out after school, (no masks needed) going downtown and creating amazing memories of our youth, are something that nobody even dares to do now. The faces we once recognized are now a blur, the only idea of them being pixelated colors in the screen we see in front of us. The dancing we planned at class of 2021’s prom with our friends have now been replaced with the dancing we will do alone in our rooms.
The feeling of losing something we would have loved, although not knowing what it would have been, hits us as senior year graduation approaches us with no sympathy. We didn’t want our senior year to be forgotten, unmemorable. Our accomplishments and goals we wanted to reach are now being swept under the rug, as there’s more important things to discuss: our future. Not knowing what we want to be when we grow up is hard, but it’s harder when time flies and we’ll soon be considered grown. We dream of our futures from time to time, but it’s difficult to set ourselves on something when we now have been confirmed that the world is unpredictable and at times, overwhelming.
We aren’t alone in this feeling, but we can’t help but feel lonely.
Stolen memories are all we have. Growing up during our awkward phase in high school has helped us become better people, and knowing ourselves better has become a strength we carry. The good times aren’t gone, they’ve only just begun. High school has been an amazing experience, although senior year didn’t go as well as we hoped. Taking things for granted is something that we have learned to not do, as one day things may be okay and the next the changes situations bring can be unsettling and scary. We started off walking into high school alone, which soon will be walking out all together.
We decide whether or not we hold close or keep certain memories and moments that we’ve had these past 4 wonderful years of our lives. Existing through them has been enough, and every moment has given us a new perspective of our realities we live. Like a window, we see the world evolve outside while we stay indoors, but this doesn’t mean we have to press pause on our own journeys, as they have only just begun. The ship of success, life, happiness, and experience won’t sail if all of us aren’t aboard. The sailor would be the future, leading us to endless possibilities that we still have yet to discover. Senior year is only a chapter in our book, as we are the ones that decide what to do with the time we are given, and the time we have left. We won’t fear the future because we know what it is to fear the past.
Although things will definitely keep changing and everything will never be the same again, we have managed to stay united as a class, and as a school. This unexpected year of changes doesn’t take away from the fact that we are a special class, just like the ones before us, because we have been brought new challenges and barriers to cross. We will finish this year as a team, hopeful and excited for what’s to come. We will look back at our photos and videos of our nostalgic times and thank the universe for giving us the souvenir of memory by our side. Class of 2021’s graduation is soon coming up, but the memories we will leave behind will not be forgotten, but remembered.
Karen Camacho
At the beginning of summer 2017, I wondered how high school life would turn out to be for me: I believed it would have been a nightmare, it was the complete opposite. We started off as students who complained about not being able to function without our morning coffees, to wishing we could be back in school. We all wanted the best last year of our high school experience, but we are now living it through a screen.
When we first heard about the Coronavirus, we all believed it was another media exaggeration, as we have stopped trusting the media long ago. The virus was a nuisance to hear about, more so when our intercession of our junior year was cut short due to cancellation of plans last minute. The places we finally were going to be able to go to with our friends, to enjoy our school days without all the assignments and hard work, were taken from us.
The last normal week of our lives was just how we always did it: attending school. The last wednesday of our junior year we got to spend together was a short day, and the excitement to leave to finally go home was over the roof! Hearing about the next two days off was like music to our ears, having a four day weekend was going to be the very best!
Until it wasn’t. We didn’t return to school that next week, or the week after. Our screens were the only thing keeping us together, yet we were miles apart from each other. The laughter of our friends, the joking around with our favorite teachers, all gone and replaced with the awkward silences of being in front of a computer all day long. We didn’t know that a quick goodbye to our friends and teachers, excited to just go home, would be our last in months.
After that first month of reality set it, we started to realize that the rest of our junior year was going to be spent being online, not getting to spend time with our friends anymore. Tables we used for lunchtime have been taken over by spiders webs to cover our presence’s absence. The trees that surrounded us would then let go of more leaves, wishing someone, just anyone, was there to step on them. Hallways that were overtaken with talking and jokes have been haunted by the silence we left with them. The anxiety we got when we had to present our soapboxes in class have turned into anxieties we’d get when we had to unmute our voices during our online classes.
We have learned to make connections with each other online, and our friendships we keep and have lost are hanging by threads of cable and internet connection. We have lost people in our life who we thought were going to be with us forever, but also learned to accept the one person that will never leave our side: ourselves. Just because we are home more than at school during class doesn’t mean we've forgotten what it meant to grow up during high school.
We start missing what we don’t have anymore, and all that’s left with us is memories.
Warm hugs and embraces we get from our friends are just replaced by the comforts of our bed blanket’s as any form of connection and affection are not an option anymore. The fun school activities we would have experienced are now nonexistent, and doing it online is just not the same. Playful times in the classrooms are now gone, chairs and tables having no purpose due to us not being able to be there anymore. Talks with each other about hanging out after school, (no masks needed) going downtown and creating amazing memories of our youth, are something that nobody even dares to do now. The faces we once recognized are now a blur, the only idea of them being pixelated colors in the screen we see in front of us. The dancing we planned at class of 2021’s prom with our friends have now been replaced with the dancing we will do alone in our rooms.
The feeling of losing something we would have loved, although not knowing what it would have been, hits us as senior year graduation approaches us with no sympathy. We didn’t want our senior year to be forgotten, unmemorable. Our accomplishments and goals we wanted to reach are now being swept under the rug, as there’s more important things to discuss: our future. Not knowing what we want to be when we grow up is hard, but it’s harder when time flies and we’ll soon be considered grown. We dream of our futures from time to time, but it’s difficult to set ourselves on something when we now have been confirmed that the world is unpredictable and at times, overwhelming.
We aren’t alone in this feeling, but we can’t help but feel lonely.
Stolen memories are all we have. Growing up during our awkward phase in high school has helped us become better people, and knowing ourselves better has become a strength we carry. The good times aren’t gone, they’ve only just begun. High school has been an amazing experience, although senior year didn’t go as well as we hoped. Taking things for granted is something that we have learned to not do, as one day things may be okay and the next the changes situations bring can be unsettling and scary. We started off walking into high school alone, which soon will be walking out all together.
We decide whether or not we hold close or keep certain memories and moments that we’ve had these past 4 wonderful years of our lives. Existing through them has been enough, and every moment has given us a new perspective of our realities we live. Like a window, we see the world evolve outside while we stay indoors, but this doesn’t mean we have to press pause on our own journeys, as they have only just begun. The ship of success, life, happiness, and experience won’t sail if all of us aren’t aboard. The sailor would be the future, leading us to endless possibilities that we still have yet to discover. Senior year is only a chapter in our book, as we are the ones that decide what to do with the time we are given, and the time we have left. We won’t fear the future because we know what it is to fear the past.
Although things will definitely keep changing and everything will never be the same again, we have managed to stay united as a class, and as a school. This unexpected year of changes doesn’t take away from the fact that we are a special class, just like the ones before us, because we have been brought new challenges and barriers to cross. We will finish this year as a team, hopeful and excited for what’s to come. We will look back at our photos and videos of our nostalgic times and thank the universe for giving us the souvenir of memory by our side. Class of 2021’s graduation is soon coming up, but the memories we will leave behind will not be forgotten, but remembered.
Karen Camacho
Blank Screen*
We spend each day sitting there staring, staring at the screen, staring at the work we are supposed to be doing. We spend our time staring at our future, questioning what we are doing, where are we going, what am I doing right now. We sit at our computers staring at work we don’t understand, work we don’t want to do just to send us to graduate and go to a college we don't want to go too. Why do we do these things? to have a job? a family?and stability I guess. Or do we do this because we think we have too. We sit and stare at our zoom classes, zoning out and just existing to get by. Watching our senior year be torn away from us, all the things we could have done all the trips we could have gone on. What's the point? we're told to look forward to our senior year because you're so close to becoming adults. But who the fuck wants to become an adult? why would we want to have responsibilities or to have a job. Why should we be excited for the worst year of our life. Spending this so-called golden year staring at a computer screen all day, faking our way through assignments and.... We’ve been checked out since quarantine was supposed to end months ago. “It’s just a few more weeks”, “oh just one more month”. We’ve spent the entire quarantine yearning for the end of quarantine.
Yet quarantine feels like it will never end, we are starting to get used to being alone. Recently we talked in senior thesis about how we’ve grown so distant from people outside our house we don’t even want to go out anymore. Quarantine has broken us. We’ve been looking forward to this year for ages, this is the year we finally get to have fun, we get to go off campus for lunch, we have a senior trip, and a senior sunrise but no longer are we given the option. Instead, we sit and stare at that blank computer screen, day after day. Everything we looked forward to was torn away from us and …. Last year we felt for the Seniors for being robbed of the rest of their year. Little did we know we were the ones about to be robbed of our last moments of youth, no trips, no lunches, no hanging out after school. All we got was to stare at a computer screen day in and day out. We sit there and stare, thinking we are ok with this. Our year set a blaze, gone before we even got a chance to enjoy it. We pretend we're ok with it, but the more we think the more we miss it. The more we realize that time sitting and staring could have been time spent talking to friends or doing anything else we could imagine, but instead were stuck there. We sit there and stare at that dreaded blank screen, we stare like there's nothing else, nothing else behind it. What is behind that blank screen? Is it your dog, your family, more school work piling up. We don’t know, we try to look behind the screen but we can't. The blank screen staring back as us.
Declan Blante
We spend each day sitting there staring, staring at the screen, staring at the work we are supposed to be doing. We spend our time staring at our future, questioning what we are doing, where are we going, what am I doing right now. We sit at our computers staring at work we don’t understand, work we don’t want to do just to send us to graduate and go to a college we don't want to go too. Why do we do these things? to have a job? a family?and stability I guess. Or do we do this because we think we have too. We sit and stare at our zoom classes, zoning out and just existing to get by. Watching our senior year be torn away from us, all the things we could have done all the trips we could have gone on. What's the point? we're told to look forward to our senior year because you're so close to becoming adults. But who the fuck wants to become an adult? why would we want to have responsibilities or to have a job. Why should we be excited for the worst year of our life. Spending this so-called golden year staring at a computer screen all day, faking our way through assignments and.... We’ve been checked out since quarantine was supposed to end months ago. “It’s just a few more weeks”, “oh just one more month”. We’ve spent the entire quarantine yearning for the end of quarantine.
Yet quarantine feels like it will never end, we are starting to get used to being alone. Recently we talked in senior thesis about how we’ve grown so distant from people outside our house we don’t even want to go out anymore. Quarantine has broken us. We’ve been looking forward to this year for ages, this is the year we finally get to have fun, we get to go off campus for lunch, we have a senior trip, and a senior sunrise but no longer are we given the option. Instead, we sit and stare at that blank computer screen, day after day. Everything we looked forward to was torn away from us and …. Last year we felt for the Seniors for being robbed of the rest of their year. Little did we know we were the ones about to be robbed of our last moments of youth, no trips, no lunches, no hanging out after school. All we got was to stare at a computer screen day in and day out. We sit there and stare, thinking we are ok with this. Our year set a blaze, gone before we even got a chance to enjoy it. We pretend we're ok with it, but the more we think the more we miss it. The more we realize that time sitting and staring could have been time spent talking to friends or doing anything else we could imagine, but instead were stuck there. We sit there and stare at that dreaded blank screen, we stare like there's nothing else, nothing else behind it. What is behind that blank screen? Is it your dog, your family, more school work piling up. We don’t know, we try to look behind the screen but we can't. The blank screen staring back as us.
Declan Blante