JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

It’s been four months since the virus upended our lives. As apocalypses go, it’s been quiet. Sometimes I don’t speak to another person for days. I force myself to walk 4,000 steps a day indoors. Most days I don’t venture past the parking area of my building. I go downstairs to feed the three garage cats and collect packages from motorcycle delivery men (Shopee is my retail therapy: cat food, envelopes, broom, coffee filters, bond paper, etc). Twice I went to the supermarket, and once to the print shop (and then my friend lent me a laser printer so I don’t have to go back). I’ve walked to the drugstore and the convenience store down the street six or seven times.

I would not survive this quarantine without my friends who, knowing my total lack of cooking skills (I gave my stove to my cleaning lady since I never used it anyway), include my grocery list when they shop, send wine and pastry, and let me judge their cooking experiments. I had one fabulous al fresco lunch on a friend’s birthday. The next one will have to wait—covid numbers have risen since the city reopened (and some testing became available), and hospital ICUs are at full capacity.

I wonder if people are still disoriented at the way we live now, or have simply accepted the strangeness. Six months ago if I saw someone approaching wearing a face mask, I would assume a hold-up and flee. Now if I see people without masks, I flee. When I watch movies where people stand too close to each other, I want to wash my hands.

For several years I have limited my news consumption because it made me catatonic with rage, grief, despair, or all of the above. I do not have to read of the day’s events, as I know people who do nothing else and keep me informed whether I ask or not. The shutdown of ABS-CBN gave me a case of déjà vu approaching whiplash. Has Miss Rona been declared a terrorist? The word of the day yesterday was “oligarchy”—that will appear in your spelling exam, kids.

Despite my best efforts my tsundoku is still growing. This is not a complaint, I am actually gloating. Publishers send review copies, which I have tried farming out to volunteer reviewers, but a pitiful percentage of them coughed up reviews. Fine, more for me. Without distractions like a social life, shopping, and other activities involving live interaction with humans, I have been writing copiously.

These are the things that I have enjoyed the most in the last four months.

Books
– Malicroix by Henri Bosco. A nice young man inherits a house on a wild, untamed island and must fulfill the conditions in his eccentric uncle’s will.
– Outline by Rachel Cusk. A writer goes to Greece. Nothing much happens, and somehow it’s spectacular.
– Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives by Karin Wieland. Marlene Dietrich, hero. Leni Riefenstahl lied and lied, but was unquestionably Hitler’s tool.
– The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. This is the way the world ends. Not with a whimper, but with a bang. Black Lives Matter and environmental cataclysm.
– Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. I reviewed it here.
– Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. This is what the world looked like five months ago. Feels like a decade ago. Hilarious and stunningly empathetic.

TV
– What We Do In The Shadows. Very silly ancient vampires living on Staten Island with their familiar, the sweet Guillermo, who turns out to be a descendant of Van Helsing. Based on the movie by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi. I laugh so hard food shoots out of my nose.
– Curb Your Enthusiasm. Have convinced antisocial curmudgeonly friend to model his wardrobe on Larry David’s.
– Normal People. Mostly so I could yell at the characters. “What? What? What is your problem??”

Podcasts
– You Must Remember This by Karina Longworth, esp the ongoing series Polly Platt: The Invisible Woman, about a filmmaker whose indispensable contributions to her ex-husband’s films were overlooked, but came into her own as a producer of Broadcast News, Say Anything and Bottle Rocket.
– Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
– You’re Dead To Me, a history podcast by Greg Jenner
– Dr. Janina Ramirez, Art Detective, delves into masterpieces like The Garden of Earthly Delights
– Backlisted, two book nerds and their guest discuss unfairly forgotten or obscure books. Makes me want to read A Rebours by Huysmans.
– Antiquitas by Barry Strauss, an ancient history podcast with episodes on Julius Caesar’s health problems and the wars between the Greeks and the Persians.

Movies
– Eric Rohmer’s entire filmography.
– Luis Buñuel’s entire filmography.
– The Spirit of the Beehive by Victor Erice. I reviewed it here.

– El Sur by Victor Erice. Watch it this Saturday and Sunday only, here. The password is clasicoscontigojulio17. I have seen two-thirds of Victor Erice’s total output of three movies, and they are perfect. And perfect for this time, because they’re about silence and isolation.