JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

This sketch is here because I thought the line was “23 days” but it’s really “33 days”. Which reminds me that it’s time for the annual viewing of The Life of Brian.

What was supposed to be the final quarter of lockdown is now the midpoint, and I’ve started a new notebook because the previous one is full. I’ve been using thin notebooks in the hope that this quarantine doesn’t last too long, but I’ve accepted the fact that until the vaccine comes, social distancing is how we live.

On one hand quarantine is not much different from my old way of life, so one might say I trained for this. On the other hand, how am I going to make a living if I can’t sell books? But I’ll figure that out in time; the priority in the next 23 days is to stay safe and sane.

Since February a lot of us have wondered if we are asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus, or if we’ve already had it and are immune to Covid-19. I took a bus to Baguio in early February after the outbreak began, and had a cold the following week. It cleared up quickly with antihistamines and Pei Pa Koa the herbal cough syrup. Then there’s my friend (40 and in good health) who in September had trouble breathing so he took himself to the ER. He was diagnosed with walking pneumonia, so called because you can walk around with no idea that you have it. Nonetheless this weak form of pneumonia killed three patients on the same floor during the week of his confinement. We joke that he is Patient Zero, but what if?

It occurred to me that those of us who are fortunate to be living alone are the new hikikomori—the Japanese who shun society and live in extreme isolation. I know of one such person, but he was French. He was 21 and lived in his girlfriend’s tiny room in her mom’s small apartment, and he never left the room when the other residents were home. There were rare sightings of him in the kitchen when he went out to get food at odd hours. He had no job, his girlfriend supported him, and her mom was too kind to kick him out. “But he’s very sweet,” said my friend, who once exchanged two sentences with the secret squatter while visiting the apartment. This made me want to go to that apartment and drag him out by the hair.

These days I find myself thanking pure dumb luck. I have a couple of masks and pairs of gloves from when we organized my friend’s overstuffed and dusty library. I got a new phone with lots of storage so I can download e-books (building a virtual tsundoku to match the actual one so the number of unread books remains constant) and listen to podcasts (Oh, Hello has started). And while I still have a short fuse, I am no longer angry all the time. My anger must’ve burned itself out after a decade or so of writing columns (rants filled up space and met deadlines).

Since the mid-2000s total strangers have accosted me to ask, “Why don’t you write angry columns like you used to?” I give a vague answer and flee the presumptuous cretin as fast as I can. Being angry all the time is not good for writing: my furious prose is one-note and boring. It is also the path to an early and ugly death (See the movie Scanners). And then the social media arrived and with everyone venting, anger just seemed redundant and tedious. Later I realized that the readers who need angry rants probably have a lot of rage they cannot articulate. Exclamation points won’t do it, and it requires some verbal dexterity. Example: You are such an asshole, you’re going to suck yourself into your own rectum and disappear. You like that? Take it and use it, but credit me, I need a job.

I don’t miss my rage. It didn’t change anything. The taxi drivers I got mad at still ignored the people flagging them down. The obtuse customer service personnel were still obtuse. The gormless have not acquired gorm. The governments change and you’re still on your own. I especially don’t miss feeling ashamed after making a public spectacle of myself.

If I had stayed angry and somehow managed not to burst an artery, I would be grinding my teeth into stumps today. Furious at the government, the douchebags and their privilege, the idiots online. I would be furious at the circumstances we’re in, and then I would feel stupid because essentially I would be furious at a virus.