Making Peace and Progress During The Pandemic // Sheilah Madonna M. Salvador


Like most of you, the pandemic created a deep and gnawing sadness and fear in me. As a writer who thrives on dark and dirty plots, who can spew out countless poems under duress (especially when heartbroken, scorned, or hungry) lock down has sunk me into a pain that I cannot express. I became as blank as the streets were empty. Writing was my redemption, but what could I write and say at this moment in history that would matter? I shut down along with the city, and like most people, my anxiety rose as the virus descended upon us. The words left me and all I felt was useless and helpless as I waited for the first pandemic of my life to bypass or claim me.

Shakespeare’s life was plagued by constant outbreaks that would wane and come back every few years. There were five severe outbreaks in his lifetime and according to surviving theatre records, he created and produced some of his greatest works, including King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra in 1606, the year when the plague resurfaced and left over 30,000 Londoners dead. 

Salvator Rosa painted L'Umana Fragilita (Human Frailty) in 1656—a year after he lost his son, brother, sister, her husband, and five of their children to a deadly epidemic of the plague that devastated Naples.

I, on the other hand, mostly played Candy Crush and trolled my exes’ Facebook pages, judging and ridiculing their quarantine outfits and weight gain. I got on my dogs’ nerves as I cuddled and coddled them continuously. I ate too much take-out, ordered too many things on Amazon, smoked too many cigars and drank too much rum and cola. When I saw a video of a man from Spain begging China for ventilators because elderly patients from his city were being taken off ventilators so that the younger patients could survive, I cried and watched zombie movies on Netflix until dawn.  

I tried to force myself away from the spell of the screens, tried to make plans to be productive: exercise everyday to kill the depression with endorphins, read a page a day from a dictionary and thesaurus to improve my vocabulary, read all the books I had no time for until now, to get inspired to write and develop more stories for submissions. Instead, I had the urge to clear out my bookshelf and put everything on the curb. I felt confronted and shamed by the works of Thomas King and Pablo Neruda. The thought of laying eyes on any of James Lee Burke’s prose made me cringe. Even Dr. Seuss and Winnie the Pooh got on my nerves. I struggled to spell words. I continued to stay up all night staring listlessly at my TV and computer screen, horrified and numbed by the COVID-19 death counts, livid because the mask I ordered still hadn’t arrived, frustrated because I was almost out of toilet paper and alcohol, and could never make it to the stores early enough because I couldn’t get out of bed until after 11 a.m. 

Soon enough I noticed the beginnings of a double chin. The furrows on my forehead have become even more prominent, the shadows under my eyes deeper and more permanent. My breathing was too laboured going up and down the stairs of my small house. I was constantly tired, scowling, and grinding my teeth. It occurred to me that I would probably kill myself faster than any virus could. 

One night, when I felt too exhausted to watch anything, I found myself gathering my crochet hooks and collection of yarns. I stayed up all night studying how to make face masks on YouTube. I am not very good at it. I kept missing stitches and my pieces would come out crooked and uneven. I must have stopped and started one project at least three times until it finally looked right. The repetition and the process of creation soothed me. The meditative state of starting over, repairing and making something right with my own hands, of witnessing it with my own eyes, in my own space made me feel real, more human again. I was no longer waiting for death, I was acting against it. I kept crocheting until I was too tired to keep going. I slept so well that night. I kept making masks until I ran out of yarn. I bought more and kept making more masks. I learned how to crochet small hearts to break the monotony of the patterns and challenge my hands with new directions. As I crocheted, my thoughts started to make more sense again, and the words slowly came back. Poems and stories started happening in my head. I made slow peace and progress.

I am no Shakespeare, nor could I create something as beautifully morbid as Salvator Rosa did. I realized that they probably created what they did during the plague outbreaks in order to save themselves. It certainly would have been easier to give up on life and in a world tilted toward death. We all want to be recognized and celebrated for our creations and accomplishments, and as famous as their pieces have become, Shakespeare, Rosa, and other artists like them who produced masterpieces in the worst of times did so in order to cope. Rather than castigating myself for not being as industrious or as creative as them, I realized that what I needed to do was learn from their acts of resilience rather than compare myself to their genius. 

So I am still making my masks and hearts, and leaving them at places where I hope people who need masks and a little smile can find them. If you ever come across any crochet pink and white masks, or little pink and purple hearts at street corners somewhere downtown, or in buses and streetcars, know that it’s from me, who just like you is trying and coping and rooting for you. 

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