Tag: Isolation

The Lockdown Diary: A View from the Stoop

Walled in on all sides by hideous apartment blocks, my flat gets no natural light, which suits my vampiric lifestyle perfectly. But I’m starting to think this perpetual shadow dwelling might not be great for my health. I just Googled the symptoms of rickets. So I’ve drawn an imaginary line out front of my building, I’m keeping my distance, and I’m spending the afternoon on the stoop...

Countless Ways to Pummel Your Soul (You Won’t Believe #382!)

As a young man I scoffed at the concept of a soul. I was a cold hearted nihilist on a mission of self destruction. It was tremendous fun. On reflection, however, it occurs to me that my soul might have taken a look at my life choices and buggered off to the Bahamas for a few years. Judging by recent dreams, I have a suspicion it inhabited the body of a handsome young bartender who got all the girls thanks to the sweet yet heartbreaking poetry he could spout on request. That was MY action!

Quarantine Dreams

I know what it looks like. It looks like I’m sitting at the kitchen table, eating cold spaghetti out of a Tupperware container, flecks of red sauce decorating the front of my dressing gown. But I’m not. I’m actually sitting on a low plastic stool in an alley off Yaowarat road in Bangkok’s Chinatown, eating a huge bowl of spicy aromatic noodle soup. A trickle of filthy drain water runs by my table, and there’s a watchful cat in every shadow.

Rear Window 2: Courtyard Capers

At some point every day I find myself gazing out my bathroom window at what could charitably be called my courtyard: a patchwork of broken pavers obscured by discarded building materials, surrounded by 6-foot cinderblock walls, and one sagging chain-link fence. It’s not a particularly inspiring vista... If this imprisonment continues much further, I see this story ending with either me or my neighbor Eddie going the other with a shiv...

Be Yourself (quick, while no one’s watching!)

Be yourself. That’s what they always say, isn’t it. With seemingly endless alone time, and no imagined judgement from onlookers, I’m being myself to an alarming degree. All those annoying habits that I would curb while in polite company are getting free rein. I refuse to cook pasta without making my “Bucatini and the MGs” … Continue reading Be Yourself (quick, while no one’s watching!)