Note from the author:
I am writing this on day 41, having lost the supposed order to my days. The hours of the afternoon melt into evenings without me noticing. I did not know I depended on Amazon orders, commute music, and readily available ice cream like this. No tasks shape my day, and the rituals I depended on to mark my weeks and happiness – they don't exist anymore.
I think about the privilege of facing a pandemic from the material comforts of my home, but I also think about the life I used to have before this. Watching the city stand still reminds me of the stillness of our own lives. There is nothing remarkable in this feeling, and yet it is the only thing I feel these days.
I was waiting on an epiphany to help me break through the mundane traps of a day job, and send me straight into a spectrum of thought and purpose. So far, I just miss having pizza arrive at my doorstep in 30 minutes. Which is to say that it's hard for me to find great meaning in anything these days. I don't paint but if I did I'd say there's nothing remarkable to paint. I do write so I can tell you there's nothing remarkable to write about either, except, perhaps, the sudden lack of narrative.
Its day 41 and I am still waiting on an epiphany.
xx,
Srish
Sometimes a week can pass.
I don't go outside. I keep my secrets to myself,
let dirt accumulate beneath my nails.
— With Solitude, Jane O. Wayne
“Boredom is different nowadays. It’s about super-saturation, distraction, restlessness. I am often bored but it’s not for lack of options: a thousand TV channels, the bounty of Netflix, countless net radio stations, innumerable unlistened-to albums, unwatched DVDs and unread books, the maze-like archive of YouTube. Today’s boredom is not hungry, a response to deprivation; it is a loss of cultural appetite, in response to the surfeit of claims on your attention and time.”
— Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past, Simon Reynolds
you may ask why I allow my face to
drown in less and less joy with each passing year and I will say
I just woke up one day and I was a still photo in everyone else’s
home but my own. or I will say I promise that my legs just need
another season, and then I will be who you fell in love with again.
and then I will probably just say I’m sorry that there was once a
tremendous blue sky and then a decade of hard, incessant rain.
— When I Say That Loving Me Is Kind Of Like Being A Chicago Bulls Fan, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
but i worry, as i skid ever closer
to the end, that it will be more
and more like this - regrets
and hungers i never knew i had
sneaking out
from all the tight pleats of my life
— The Kitchen Counter, Ellen Bass
All artwork by Shreshi.
Find more of her work on her art account.