My Seoulful Life: Quarantine Chronicles

“Smart people may rule the world, but reckless and stubborn people like me protect it," pronounced Hong Yoo Chan, a civil activist lawyer on my new favorite Netflix drama Vincenzo. If you hadn't already fallen in love with Yoo Chan at this point, the way he expresses his pertinacity for protecting the week will make your heart want to wrap around him.

The series so far is 20 episodes. I have just finished episode 13. I pushed play on episode one three ... or was it four?, days ago. I've earned a real A+ in Binging 101 here in quarantine.

On the eve of my release from the 14-day quarantine in my new apartment in Seoul, I've got a few reflections, as I normally do. Most of tonight's musings center around how to survive 14 days of solitude in a new country.

And here we go:

Binge, Baby, Binge

It might seem like with so much time on your hands, you should try out all the new recipes, write your next novel, or book of poems, or organize every file on your computer. Man-woman-human, if this is you, I salute you. It is not me. I have found that during my two quarantines (the first being in China) that I have about five hours a day when my brain is working with the flag at full staff. I don't know what happens all of the other hours exactly, but my eyes seem to glass over and my brain gets fuzzy. I think this is what happens to a person when they don't have much stimulation from the outside world.

Enter Netflix. Or HBO Max, or AmazonPrime, or whatever. All of them, really. I have mindfully binged my way through the past two weeks. I know that this won't be a habit that sticks, and so I have allowed myself to watch episode after episode of Kim's Convenience (which has been featured in the news recently) and Vincenzo with zero guilt.

The male lead in Vincenzo is so dishy, and the female lead is beautiful and brilliant. Binging has become synonymous with wellness the past 14 days, but so have a few other things.

Sweat, quarantinee, sweat

I do find that my mental health is stronger when I have routine, and so during quarantine, I have created some semblance of one. Each day began with HIIT and/or yoga. At the end of my chapter in China, my friend Kim introduced me to Heather Robertson, a Canadian fitness trainer who puts free videos on YouTube for equitable access. Her Tabata and HIIT workouts have torn up my muscles, but in the best way. I do not currently have any weights in my apartment, but as Jeana Anderson Cohen says, "If you have a body, you have a gym," and Robertson's videos prove it.

In addition to Robertson, I have adored staying present with the help of Maggie Umberger, my fitness friend from Chicago. Her website has an assortment of both workouts and yoga classes. I love all of her stuff, but I am especially enamored with her yoga because when Maggie leads a practice, she does so with kind reminders about micro-movements, with such lovely transitions between poses, and with purposeful sequencing. The highlight of the week was perhaps getting to tune in for one of her live virtual classes. Bringing her energy into my new apartment in real time was a marvel of technology today.

Foodie, find your apps

Another aspect of technology that I quite love is the ability to order groceries and meals from local restaurants with ease. My new school, Seoul Foreign, was so warm and welcoming as they asked for a list of groceries that each individual or family wanted in their apartment upon arrival. They also provided the first number of meals.

After this point, I allowed myself to order off of the Shuttle app once a day. It was indulgent. I regret nothing. I delighted in sipping on Earl Grey lattes, chowing on pizza, and noshing on Korean fried chicken for the first time.

I am privileged to be able to afford the luxury of the daily order. I am oh-so-thankful for this privilege as it kept my spirits higher most days.

Get a little learn on, Teacher

As noted above, the flag in my brain comes down before the sun sets when I am holed up in a small space, but I think mental stimulation is important during this time of confinement. This year I will be teaching the novel Human Acts by Korean author Han Kang. It's a rather dark and heavy, but beautifully written, book about recent Korean history. Further, her themes are timeless and I can begin to imagine some of the reflections I will have with my students about the tragedy or hope that we can bring to one another.

While I have been working to complete a 1,000-piece puzzle, I have been listening to Isabel Wilkerson's Caste. Wilkerson has a keen ability to connect racism in the States to Nazi Germany and the caste system of India, drawing astounding parallels between the three whilst offering historical and present example after another of how a caste system is alive and well within the borders of the United States.

I read mostly by day as both of these books were a lot to digest, but very important reads.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T your new host country

I knew before arriving that I would need to do a 14-day quarantine in Seoul. I understand the country's decision to mandate the quarantine for foreigners arriving. There has been a notable uptick in cases as Korea struggles to get the vaccine out as fast as they had hoped, and the Delta variant is coursing through Asia.

Quite different than the US, much of Asia monitors us to make sure we abide by the rules of quarantine. This does not bother me. A result of living in China for five years is that I have come to understand and appreciate a respect for the collective over the individual, at least in cases such as a global pandemic.

Unlike China, which had a bit more pomp and circumstance to the end of my quarantine, at noon tomorrow, I can simply delete the app and re-enter the outside world.

Those of us quarantining together apart were allowed to walk to our Covid testing site yesterday for our final PCR test. I appreciated getting a peak at my new neighborhood.

I can't wait to throw on my tennies and hit the trail along the river.

A tree with an IV. I'd like to learn more.

It is so definitely definitely definitely part of my plan to buy a Vespa. This is even my color. It'll really put the icing on the cake of #myseoulfullife.

Alright, friends and family, my eyes have blurred a few hundred words ago, and so I am going to close the computer for the night and push play on episode 14 of Vincenzo. I miss you, Minnesota. I miss you, China. I can't wait to properly meet you tomorrow, Seoul.

Love and light,

Jame

Writing from Day 8 of Quarantine: A Toast to Paradox

After over a week of isolation, I now know something about what an animal in a zoo feels like. Sort of. In the sense that I’ve been taken out of my natural habitat. This is interesting, though, because as an introvert I would have argued my home is certainly my natural habitat. But 8 days into this solitude ... I’m over this shit.

Or at least the nearly absolute solitude of it. Other parts of this experience, like the ways that my community is continuing to reach me, just tickles my heart and soul. Since arriving back home on Friday night, I have been the recipient of a number of beautiful deliveries: a supply of dark chocolate, a bouquet of cat-safe flowers, two lunches of rooftop garden veggies, and ice and limes for my gin and tonics. I am ready to just be able to really give back now, and I know that the coming weeks will offer plenty of opportunities to pay it forward.

It seems that the new regulation now is that anyone returning from a country deemed a danger for importing the virus will have to do the full quarantine in a hotel room. The exception may be those with children. Hearing this news today made me ever-grateful that I returned from Thailand when I did.

I, like you, continue to work to establish a new normal and a new routine. I have let go of the notion that this time of quarantine and working from home is going to be my most productive time ever. I have learned that the mathematical equation that sums up my days is not time+energy=output; rather my days equate to time+space (minus) a-great-deal-of energy=grace to just be.

My days have still started with movement, but not long, high-intensity workouts. I hit my mat for 30-45 minutes of yoga, or a short weight workout. I thank myself for showing up.

My balcony has really become something of a haven. I move here, but I also eat here, sit and watch the world here, write here. Why haven't I been doing this all along?

During the afternoon, I connect with my students via Zoom.

Seniors who have just found out that their IB exams will be canceled.

I also use Zoom for my mid-day breaks; I meet my friends there for good laughs. I do wonder ... I wonder if Zoom and Tik Tok are in cahoots here ... just a conspiracy theory. The Tik Tok videos that come into my chats throughout my day give me so much life. In the midst of chaos, we are finding our creative outlets.

My nights are spent listening to 90s hip hop, laying on my yoga mat on the balcony, trying to get my cats to engage in photo shoots. Now, this is the real stuff of cat lady memoirs. Save me soon, please.

Being quite confined these past days has allowed me to sit in a place of awareness and this awareness has been a sensory experience. As I sit on my balcony in the morning, afternoon, and evening, I feel my senses awaken in deep ways. The sounds of the city, colors of the trees below, and textures of the yoga mat I am seated on all become palpable to me.

Indeed, there are parts of my day that I love. Watching the sun rise higher in the sky as I lay leisurely in bed in the morning and watching the sun set while I eat dinner each evening are new parts of my routine that offer a certain excitement to each day; I love enjoying the simplicity and beauty of these moments.

As in any temporal context, there are other parts of the day that are so tedious, predominantly the way I just feel so dang tired right now, the past weeks of uncertainty and ambiguity seemingly having compounded in my body. So it is that I, paradoxically, feel both exhausted and entirely alive simultaneously.

This evening I was reading from Adreanna Limbach's Tea and Cake with Demons: A Buddhist's Guide to Feeling Worthy. Chapter four begins with Tolstoy's words from Anna Karenina: "All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow." As Limbach recounts the story of the Buddha, she writes, "His origins are also a demon story, as most stories of transformation and triumph are, highlighting how we are made in the perpetual alchemy of falling apart and coming together." These words struck deep into me, for my own experience in the past year and a half; it also feels these words just ring so true for the Collective right now.

As individuals, as families, as communities, we are both falling apart and coming together on the path of novel and scary terrain. I talk to my best friend Jenn to hear about how her clinic does not have enough masks for doctors and patients, feeling like our healthcare system is ripping at the seams, to then hear and see the dozens of people I know who are making masks from fabrics and original patterns. I talk to my family and hear a certain anxiety in their messages when they consider the prospect of weeks of social distancing, to hear about them also opening up to new technology for virtual happy hours. I have felt separated from students who hit a hard place in the face of distance learning, to feel them return after so many of us have reached out with words and video conversations to embrace them in their confusion.

Sitting in an uncertain space with so many of my friends and family really beginning to process a new reality, I consider the power of how we frame that reality. As I was (again) scrolling Instagram today, I came across a post from Dr. Alexandra H Solomon. Rather than call keeping ourselves away from others "social-distancing" she coined it "cocooning." If we all enter our cocoons, we come out more beautiful than before. As with the Buddha, our transformation will happen after living in some dark spaces. After the dusk of each day is the dawn of a new morning.

To darkness, and to light.

Sending all my love,

Jame

Writing from Phuket, this Side of Paradise

I feel like I have lived a lifetime since I last wrote an update in the Life and Times of the Coronavirus. Some days, it has felt that an entire Universe has existed inside of that one day. Two weeks and three days ago, I left Shenzhen for Phuket, Thailand. I was hesitant to leave at first, actually. I had settled into such a routine in Shenzhen, and I felt safe and secure in this routine; changing locales felt a bit riskier, at least that was my perception. Originally, for spring break, I was supposed to go to Taiwan for a yoga retreat. When Covid-19 hit, Taiwan closed their borders to China, so Plan A was foiled. I was disappointed, but I decided I would make my own personal yoga retreat in Shenzhen, until I came out a discussion with my therapist having decided to take a chance on a retreat in Thailand, one of the last countries to keep their borders open.

As I reflect on this decision, it feels like the Universe had conspired to make it so from the beginning. The past two weeks have offered space for my heart to open and expand and sigh into beautiful spaces. Before I left Shenzhen, I was worried that I would lose my writer’s flow, and while writing has not been a priority in Phuket, being in a flow state sure has persisted.

The first days in Phuket were spent on the beach. The woman in this photo did not yet know the trajectory of the trip. I have extended my stay twice so far, finding just what I have needed here in Thailand.

My days have been spent practicing yoga in the morning and evening, and in between, spending time with some of the best souls and living in the moments. If you find yourself seeking a place of solace in Southeast Asia, I must highly recommend CC’s Hideaway. The curry is delicious, the smoothies are divine, the yoga is transcendent, and the staff is so, so warm.

For me, what has also been extraordinary about this time is that my anxiety has been kept in check. For anyone, a time of such uncertainty can cause a great deal of stress and anxiety, and understandably so. Somehow, I have leaned into the uncertainty, and it feels that my spirit has used the life I am living at a slower pace to level up. I have seen and felt a great deal of fear around me, and yet I have continued to maintain a state of wellness for myself.

Thailand has been liberating. And that liberation, and the centered feeling I continue to be in touch with, looks a bit like this ...

Slow afternoons have sometimes given way to nights of dancing, followed by swimming in the middle of the night under the light of a full moon.

These folks are such good energy. Looking at this photo, I consider how special it is when you cross paths with the right people at the right time.

I watched a shooting star streak across a corner of the sky as I turned my attention away from the moon for a moment during our moonlit swim. It seems that some of the world has gone daft with the current viral state of affairs; my world, though, floats in a sea of just right moments. I have deep gratitude for what this time and space is allowing me to explore.

This morning, I am preparing for the first yoga practice of the day, and then I will get online to connect with my students. Teaching from Thailand is a bit harder than teaching from Shenzhen, but I will not complain about teaching from paradise. I have been meditating on words that I heard from my first yoga instructor here: More open heart, More happy life.

One of my favorite poets, Rumi, once wrote,

“There’s a morning when presence comes

over your soul. You sing like a rooster

in your earth-colored shape. Your heart

hears and, no longer frantic, begins

to dance.”

Wherever you are, I hope that you find space for deep movement, for peace, and for presence.

Sending lots of love from Thailand,

Jame