Quarantine is moved to the Baci Abode

Last night, at 11 pm, I was curled up in bed in my hotel quarantine, devouring another episode of Outlander on my iPad, eating square after square of a dark chocolate bar. The title of the episode (season 2, episode 6, for other fans out there) that I was viewing is “The Best Laid Schemes.” I feel like this is the theme of 2020 in many ways right now. It reminds me of a line from a Robert Burns’ poem entitled To a Mouse. As Burns plows a field, and runs over the mouse’s nest, he writes, “The best laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry.”

Reflecting on this line, I am thinking most of my friends and family that I have been connecting with back in the States the past couple of days. Grandma and my Aunt Abby canceled their plans for Vegas, another friend and his family canceled the spring break he and his wife had promised the daughter they had recently uprooted, and dozens of you are getting ready to support distance learning while also keeping your careers afloat. It sure does feel that Covid-19 is akin to that plow from the poem.

I continue to occupy new and interesting spaces back in China. At the end of the episode, the phone rang in my room, and I was told that I would be going home, for certain this time. I ran around, throwing my belongings into my suitcase in mish-mash fashion. I flew out the door and down the elevator, delighted at this news. I had planned to be in the hotel another night as I had gotten no news of my test results just yet — and this time, I was happy to have these plans interrupted.

Two official workers whisked me home in this golf cart. It was pretty nice to feel the wind in my hair after a 48-hour stay indoors.

There was a point where a 14-day quarantine inside my own home almost seemed unbearable; now it seems a welcome space compared with the hotel, where I did not have access to a kitchen, my wardrobe or the queens of my castle: the cats.

When I walked back into my home last night, it hardly felt real. I am ridiculously grateful to be in my own apartment now, even if I am forced to stay in isolation for another 12 days.

This morning I allowed myself the space to be slow in rising, slow in my yoga asanas, slow in my kitchen. I read somewhere recently something that went like this: when you go twice as slow, you notice twice as much.

After my easy yoga practice, I sat on my meditation cushion, soaking in the sound bath of a Shenzhen morning. A car horn honked emphatically as traffic whirred 17 floors below me. Birds twittered while a mate cawed loudly in their direction. The sound of materials stacking, or dropping, set a sort of drum beat to my surroundings. A puppy yipped as I opened my eyes to catch a glimpse of a white-winged bird soar into a green tree in front of me. It was lovely to sit in such awareness. Rather than focusing on being confined, right now, I am continuing to find delight in what I have access to: slow living.

I also got back on my whole bowls kick. I am making my way through Alison Day’s cookbook, but today I was short on ingredients, so it was millet, Chinese greens, and hemp seeds for brekky.

Silvie is a big fan of the life of leisure. From time to time, she does go after one of the balls that her Auntie Megan gifted her, but otherwise, she does a lot of this.

After talking with two friends from home this afternoon, I just keep thinking about all of you just beginning to process how you will protect your families from contracting the virus, but perhaps even more, how you will sustain the emotional well-being of yourself and your loved ones. Words that my dear friend Ceci says to me feel appropriate here: “You can do hard things.” And you will.

In the midst of the rapid changes that we are facing each day in regards to the hard and unexpected space that we find ourselves in, I wonder what a slower pace of life will surface in us? I wonder what we will allow ourselves to hold space for in terms of emotions and reactions to a novel experience? I wonder what we will find in ourselves that we did not remember or know existed?

While I am trying to monitor my social media use — mostly unsuccessfully at the moment — I am so enjoying seeing how everyone is working to create new routines, to help their children understand the power of positivity, to reach out to one another. It’s a real shit time in many ways. One of my administrators passed along a clip of a BBC Radio recording. The broadcaster says, “Yes, there is fear. Yes, there is isolation. Yes, there is panic buying. Yes, there is sickness. Yes, there is even death. But they say in Wuhan after so many years of noise, you can hear the birds again ... the sky is no longer thick with fumes but blue and grey and clear ... Today, a young woman I know is busy spreading flyers with her number through the neighborhood so that the elders may have someone to call on ... All over the world people are waking up to a new reality ... to what really matters ...

To love ... there can always be a rebirth of love.”

Tonight, I am imagining that mouse in the field, looking at her plowed over home. I hope that after she acknowledged the devastation that she had not planned for that she gathered up her spouse, and her children, and industriously set off to rebuild her living space — unlikely to look just as it had before, but to be a shelter for her family all the same. And, to be a space for love.