DAY 8: ECQ

I find myself going back to my blog after a long period of lethargy.  Or lack of time and focus.

I excused myself for making myself too busy to be busy.

But the quarantine is now on its eighth day.  

I have been under a self-imposed house arrest since Monday afternoon. Then I thought I was on the verge of incurable boredom that I went to the gym, posted a photo in Instagram and Facebook --- that sent havoc to the universe of my friends in those social media platforms.  All were begging me to go home, telling me that I was making a fatal mistake to worry about my abs and cardio exercises over the dangers of the virus.

I belong to that age group quite vulnerable to the virus. So there was valid concern that I was mistaking myself to be an invincible mutant.

There was practically nobody in the gym at that time.  Maybe about eight of us excluding the trainers who were in greater number than the clients  So after an hour I went home and did some groceries.

And that was my most recent glimpse of civilization.

For a time, saddled by my schedule, I had wished for a few days off.  

I wanted a respite from school and film work so that I can just loll in bed and watch another Koreanovela in Netflix or probably finish the pile of books I bought from last month's Big Bad Wolf Book Sale. I only wanted a few days  ... but I never asked for a month. 

Out of my sheer craving for the sanctuary of my house, now I am cringing ... out of a restless need to see the outside world. I give myself three more days and I will be climbing walls.  Or going up the roof.

What is happening is necessary if not inevitable. The lock down is the only viable solution ... at this point of the game.

We could have done something earlier to avoid if not prepare for our Patient 1 but we did not. But that is the subject of a completely different essay which I do not intend to write about.

We were not prepared.  We thought it was bad when we watched the videos of the empty streets of locked down Wuhan.  We did not realize that it was going to be this bad the first time we heard of a tourist who was confirmed positive and went around the Visayas then Manila for a vacation.  We were a little bit more alarmed that a Filipino with NCov19 was finally spotted  --- and he went around the Greenhills Shopping Center while asymptomatic.

That commercial hub in Greenhills was locked down for disinfection and it only took a week before the exponential growth of the  infected warranted a "community quarantine"of Metro Manila by the weekend.  But worse, about two days later, the whole island of Luzon went on a complete lock down.

I have lived through the most interesting years of Martial Law.  Most of my college years ... and many more after were guided by the law of curfew hours.  It was midnight to four in the morning then but because this is a health emergency, the curfew hours now stretch from eight in the evening to five in the morning.  (The City of Muntinlupa went beyond that and announced a 24 hour curfew since the 20th of March.)

Movement is now restricted. At my age I cannot even get a quarantine pass because I am a senior citizen and should be restricted to the perimeter of the home. So much for going back to the gym ... or the grocery.  But we can if we must although it will again bring havoc to that subset of friends who are threatening to chain me to my bed in order to make me behave according to the dictates of the DOH.

But then the health scare is only the first layer of worries.

The blessing and bane of social media are that you get far too much information.  Both true and false.  And sometimes you cannot tell one from the other because your mind feels like it has been placed inside a blender with all the information twirling so many spins a millisecond.  

During the Martial Law years there was great fear ... but not as much fear as it is now because of the constant flow and bombardment of information coming from social media platforms, your cellphones and your friends who are all insisting to meet up at Zoom or Facebook Messenger in order to amuse or scare each other.

Now there is a paranoia of being informed while being uninformed or misinformed.  You no longer have the time to be discerning and just let everything go through that mental blender all over again, sputtering an opinion or two when asked.

Now Day 8 is ending.  And if feels more than a week.

A lesson is being taught here.  I am still a believer that nothing happens by accident and that everything that transpires in life must have a reason and provide a learning.  When you do not comprehend or accept the lesson, then everything proves futile and useless.  

I believe the lessons are very, very clear in what we --- and that means the whole world --- is going through right now. We all screwed it up as individuals and as inhabitants of a benevolent planet and now it is payback time.

We needed to slapped silly.  More important, we are being commanded to STOP.  Only when we STOPPED did we see. Only when we are forced to keep still because other people became the danger did we begin to hear.  The problem was that ... is that ... we have conditioned our daily lives based on our Google calendars.  

We have defined our existence by appointments, achievements and accumulations so much so that stripped off them we are stupefied.

When we wake up each morning for a week realizing that we cannot go out and our movements are limited, we do not have work, we have no deadlines to fulfill ... then we are confronted by a completely different routine.  We wake up, we eat, we do whatever, we eat, we watch TV, or read ... then sleep to do more or less the same thing all over again.

And this has only been going on for a week!

I promised myself that I will be productive and write three screenplays by Easter Sunday when all this is lifted.

I promised myself I will finish at least four to five novels of guilty pleasure (nothing intellectual, nothing to debate about in posh cafes and post-dinner conversations.

I promised myself I will go back to drawing --- considering how I have lost that hobby and yet accumulated so many sketching materials which I have not used.

I promised myself that I will not feel miserable that all our Easter plans with my nephews are cancelled ... and what I am going through right now is like an extended Holy Week minus the rituals and sacraments.

But then again ...

I cannot find the motivation to write a screenplay because I am not sure when the next production meeting will take place ... if at all after we survey the debris that this juggernaut will leave in the movie industry.

I cannot sit down and read because the silence is killing me with all these nervous thoughts about when this is going to end ... and what it will take to make it end, how it will end and what is the end? 

I cannot even lift a pencil to go back to my coloring books.

I am still trying to figure out if this is what has been predicted by all the soothsayers, all the banshees, all the clairvoyants about the great purge.

I can look very hard at the positive side of all this --- and finally ACCEPT the lesson that is being taught.  That we brought this upon ourselves.  That it is not only that particular bat and pangolin who caused the migration of NCov19 to humans.  

That it is about irresponsibility and recklessness and failure to heed our crimes against nature that has brought about this moment.   

Who would have thought that what started in a wet market in Wuhan would create such havoc to literally paralyze the world?  Who would have imagined the extent of damage this has created in terms of human lives and worse ... an impending economic meltdown?

There seems to be nothing positive about that ... but there is.

We are finally made to realize that we are not invincible, no amount of  nuclear power gives bragging rights to the most powerful nations because they too are vulnerable.  What could put us down is what Bill Gates was talking about five years ago: microbes.  

OK. Day 8 is coming to a close and the enormity and graveness of the problem are becoming clearer by the day. This is only a fourth of the journey assuming the quarantine will be lifted on Easter Sunday.  But that all depends ... on us.  And if ever it will be extended, it will also be because of us.

As each day of worldwide paralysis takes place, the deeper we fall into this quagmire of confusion and insecurity. And in these depths, we realize how big a lesson this is to learn.

Onward to Day 9.