Skintrapped

skintrapped
mindless thoughts from pandora

How are you feeling on a scale from one to ten?

..

In the era of Covid-19, there's an interesting relationship between isolation and survival. On the one hand—survival means isolation, isolation means health, health means happiness, and happiness means survival. On the other hand... does it?

I'm in my final semester of my final year of undergraduate life at the University of British Columbia. As of Monday, all in-person classes have been moved online and the campus has been shuttered and mothballed. My partner just lost her job cataloging insects because of the slowdown. My postgraduate options seem to be attenuating early due to the influence of the virus on day-to-day life—one prospective institution moved their in-person interviews to after the deadline to respond to another acceptance. To someone like me who has attached being on campus with productive life and being home with free time, the shutdown has spelled a death sentence for my productivity.

This is not to say that I don't think any of this is necessary. Social isolation has been mathematically shown to drastically decrease the size of infected populations without overloading the capacity of the healthcare system. My partner and I have been doing our parts in order to curtail the effects of the virus: only going outside for the very occasional—contact-free—smoke break. A number of people very close to me, including my own father, are highly susceptible to complications catalyzed by Covid-19. Hell, I had asthma when I was young and have 78% lung function thanks to scarring on my lungs left behind by pneumonia at the age of 5. It's important to stay indoors, off of public transit, and away from other people.

Which brings me to say that it's almost impossible for us right now. We're attempting to hand over our lease to new tenants early, which means lots of bringing strangers into our home in order to show them around. I've been taking all the regular precautions—I even have a mental script I go through while meeting people outside our property. We'll be going inside for a quick walk-through, I say, we just ask that you please refrain from touching any surfaces and that we keep questions to a minimum until we get back outside where we can talk freely. But even if we manage to collapse our lease, we still need to move our things back across an international border back to the United States, and to get across the border you need to be a citizen of where you are going. If I go back to Washington, I'm not getting back across the Canadian border on my student visa and U.S. passport alone until after the virus blows over. Here's hoping I can pull myself through these newly online courses to graduate on time, right?

It's been hard though. Life feels like it's ground to a halt... and it has. School feels ephemeral. My interpersonal relationships have reverted to the inferior internet-based existences I became so unfulfilled by in '17. Music production and writing feels soulless, destitute, DOA. Last night I stepped outside at 2:30 AM to spark up some indica and found myself narrating my surroundings. What was where, what direction it was in, each minute action of my body. I'm not entirely sure if it was simply an exercise built out of disassociation or a fervent attempt at cataloging a memory—"setting a beacon," as I've taken to calling it—but both options seem to be based in my desire to write and feel stories surrounding me. There's so little inspiration about me that doesn't feel reactionary to the pandemic currently afflicting the world, and it feels almost fake to be making art about it. Disrespectful to people going through it. Even though we're all going through it in different capacities.

In my last blog post, back in the summer of 2018, I mentioned that I was looking forward to the autumn, "when I'll be surrounded by more students all trying to focus on their education and their creativity. To hone their skills in their chosen environments." Right now it feels as though the "autumn" itself, that bubbling mess of creativity and drama and life that is UBC, has been stripped away from this time of year. My graduation will not happen in person. I will not walk a stage and receive a diploma like that naïve kid who used to be me did in May of 2016. It will feel as groundless as the rest of this time. A fleeting moment that will be relived in memories surrounded by "can you believe that happened?" and "when I was your age...". A memory, yes. But one that I won't be able to discern reality or artificiality from. And while the prospects of that scare me, make the future feel small and meaningless and hopeless, I can't forget that it's a necessary step that must be taken now, and no other time. I don't want to wait another half year to graduate. I don't want to be pushed away from this dream of graduate school and adulthood—true adulthood, not this faux-responsible college life—any longer than I have to be.

..

Stray, await
the sleep-energy
and bear tomorrow.
Resile from worry
please, just try,

your creases will fade
with time.

I believe in the water
that falls upon your lips.
I will provide the lap
upon which you lay your head,
you are the fever

moaning heat
onto these bare legs.

I will murmur history into your ear,
fill this snowdrop silence
with careful words
you might believe.
Believe

in the soft tapping
of my hands on your chest,

the rhythmic moments
when the clock lets go of time,
stands as still as my focus,
clatters onto the next second
as restlessly as your dreaming. ....

..

I hope that the few loose ends that Vancouver still has in store for me will be tied up soon. It's bittersweet to be leaving this place already; it feels as though I just arrived a few months ago even though I've been taking classes here for nearly four years. This city has been good to me. I also thank this city for showing me that a city "being good to me" is something I see much differently than I must did. So many friends have come and gone, so many eras of my life have began or concluded or expanded, so many stages of my growth have happened so fast.

My brother and I were talking in the shivering February cold on the roof of his building. We talked about many things, but one concept has really stuck with me: this idea of outgrowing others to the extent that clean-slate resolution is no longer possible through no fault of the self. We have both had people very close to us do some fairly heinous things to us, and in some situations reconciliation and mutual understanding is an option but in many it isn't. There's this desire that we both have to maintain relationships with people who have meant a lot to us in our lives. Not emotional relationships or anything like that. I'm talking purely the "I know that person wronged me but we've laid things out and are on the level and nothing is weird" level. And it's possible with some, through substances or otherwise, but for others it is incredibly difficult. You'll be 99% of the way there and then you'll see them and they say something probably meant to get underneath your skin and then all the work that has been done has evaporated. Poof. Gone into the ether.

Vancouver gave me a few people like that. It also cut down the list quite a bit once I grew away from myself enough.

I'm where I need to be.

..

.... Shut your eyes,
drift, drift away,

away from sleep to rest,
from vision to dream.
From castles of clouds,
to shivers in the sun,
to the rains upon the plain.

And moonlight will be the waxing shine
upon your wane.

03/20/20