CRITICA

I felt the urge growing inside, a turbulence floating as the weather was changing. The clouds were forming; the darkness and cold invading while the wind started to blow stronger and stronger. March 13th, 2020 was the first and the last day. The academic year ended; the quarantine began. At home, suddenly, an abrupt interruption, sudden silences, quietness, and everything slowed down. At first, fear and uncertainty, doses of relief followed by waves of disbelief and deep worry. What hits us when a Pandemic strikes?

Working from home, I attempted to re-create the quietness, isolation and safety of my office. I found a corner from where to listen while I observed the clouds in the blue sky, birds flying and the sounds of my household invading the room while I tried to concentrate. I appreciated the stop – my life needed reset and rest. I considered the many ways in which this life is still so precious to me, while engaging with how it could also be precious to others. The only writing I could do was a will imagining my absence from the center of the life still being lived and attempting to create (or continue) a dialogue. My will had a message to all who depended on me, a message of care and dedication, of love and fright. And after that, I found silence. My creative voice lost inside overwhelm. How do we make sense of global crises?

We cling to an imagination of a future to latch ourselves to in order to bear the raw experience of being alive. My will delineated the precarious attempt to create a future where I would be present and yet absent. It guaranteed the continued existence of the ones I care (and cared) for. Weirdly comforting, imagining my death became a way to grab onto my life. 

What is a will if not a desire to still be heard? to still be found? to have a say on this life that continues beyond one’s death? I find it interesting that this set of instructions that you can leave to the ones’ who survive you to be called “a will”. If you look at a dictionary, will is defined as 1. expressing the future tense; 2. expressing inevitable events; 3. expressing a request; 4.. expressing facts about ability or capacity; 5. expressing habitual behavior; 6. expressing probability or expectation about something in the present. 

However, from that place of absence, a will is the possibility of being able to make a request based on the present as one is faced with what was inevitable. My will is a dialogue with a future absent me who is still engaging with my future potential life. In that life, my will is expressed, and left as a request that marks my existence in a continuum embraced by others’ memories.

I thought about the many plans for 2020, some of them felt so solid and certain. And, now, I only have today, and maybe tomorrow. My calendar goes as far as next week, and even that feels shaky. It still holds emptiness and uncertainty, many forgotten and cancelled events. It also stores modified meetings, which I am unsure where to record. Everyday is a day to be engaged with, the small adjustments hour by hour of what is added, and what was removed. Our present is almost the ticking sound of seconds passing by as we traverse the next moment. Time was measured by where the sun is hitting on my balcony, as I oscillate in opening and closing my shades in between patients. With open shades, I sometimes notice the clouds forming and passing by. I almost only know about their presence after they have gone, when for a second I am invaded by the thought of their absence. Clouds are short-lived. I resent when they make the sky white, and cold, sometimes gray, and foggy. I embrace them when I see their soft cotton fluctuating dance forming shapes that I wonder about. Quarantine gave me time for contemplation. Through my balcony, dream space between the inside of my house, and the undeniable presence of the world, I see myself flying with the birds that sing during the Spring. Life still goes on. At least, for now.