Dedicated to all students who are stuck studying online. You are not alone.
A subtle ray of light emerges from the fold in the curtains of my quarantine room in the Lanark building on Carleton’s campus. I see the light stretch towards the brick-shaped plastered wall, expanding in the rooms’ semi-dark atmosphere. The light follows the electrical tube along the ceiling, giving a mild sparkle to the lifeless yet enormous mirror which surrenders to the dark extremity of the room. As my eyes open in the uncertain morning light, I begin to hear the moaning of the air heater working 24-7—an obsession.
A small line of light shines from underneath my door leading to the corridor. Another one filters from behind the sweatshirt I’d thrown to obscure the screen of my room’s landline. I slowly turn around in my bed, my brain trying to process where I am. I stick my head between the plastic pillows in a desperate attempt to silence that damn noise of the air heater. Nothing happens. I give up and lie immobile for an indefinite time. The noise absorbs every possible sign of life, and the curtains reveal the grey of midwinter’s morning. Nothing changes, nothing could change.
Suddenly, three knocks tap my door. My food. I get up, tossing my blankets to the side. I stumble and curse against the rocking chair I accidentally hit on my way to the door. I open the door to pick up the paper bag of food left behind by the residence fellows, who make their way back along the deserted corridor. Impersonal static neon lights light up the corridor. Warning signs on the doors, three red emergency exit signs emphasize the silence.
If I had written these words just a little more than a year ago, it would have been regarded as science fiction or even a post-apocalyptic short story. Now, we’re all used to this. Quarantine, isolation, physical distancing, masks, lockdown, red, orange and yellow zones, hand sanitizer bottles at nearly every corner. These words were once remote, perhaps alien. Now they have acquired all the nuances of everyday life.
As humans, we have an incredible ability to adapt, yet this does not downscale the issue’s seriousness. Even the most skeptical are involved in this dialectic, as no one is truly immune to the flows of globalization. We are immersed, if not drowned, in an atmosphere not very far from a zombie scenario. By pushing our minds only a small step beyond the metaphor, we could see that an enormous number of us are reduced to even worse conditions than zombies.
Sometimes, I perceive myself as one of them. Time has gone, as silence did. Every day-to-day task has become a meaningless routine. The food that comes at a precise, early time, the grey sky, the crises whenever I try to redeem myself by doing something productive, the daily calls to report spectral symptoms of an invisible enemy. Everything is a doubt, most likely because I know this won’t be a temporary situation. When I’ll be finally out of here, I won’t be able to go where I want, to meet the people I want, to be free.
That morning the alarm was set for 3 a.m. My girlfriend and I barely slept. At the first ring, she got up with a sudden jolt, turned on the light and started to get dressed. I laid there for some moments on the precariously small bed, my head in confusion, her hug suddenly gone. I got up stumbling and she was already in the bathroom. Rubbing my eyes, I tried to clear up the mess I had spread across the room without waking up the entire neighbourhood.
I vaguely remember the brisk breakfast, one of those meals you entirely forget what you said, but the feelings and some fleeting images remain printed in your heart with the ink of nostalgia. I remember her eyes, firm, yet terrified, because mine probably were looking the same way.
Struggling, I managed to close the suitcase after having thrown inside the last bit of random things. We left with the feeling of having left home forgetting something important. It was freezing outside, as we waited a bit for the engine to heat. I insisted on driving, but she didn’t let me, so I searched for the route to the airport on Google Maps. A few minutes later, we were driving through thick fog banks on an empty, cavernous highway.
I’ve never been an experienced air traveller. When I left the deserted Venice Marco Polo Airport at 7:25 a.m. on Jan. 7, it was my third trip by plane and my first to Canada—the first alone. After the plane soared through the clouds, I found myself staring down on the Alps, the high peaks covered in snow and the pinkish rays of the morning light reminding me of the Dolomites, close to where I lived until a few days before.
As I flew over the Atlantic Ocean, the memories came back. I pulled out my laptop and started writing:
“The thick fog which has gripped my thoughts for days is acquiring substance, becoming recognizable —rationalizable. I am travelling to America, and nearly halfway there. My grandad died less than four days ago. Right before leaving Frankfurt on my layover, I called my grandmother for the last time before a four-month silence. Last night I slept for the last time with my girlfriend. When she drove me to the airport, filled with anxiety, and a fear of separation, we said goodbye to each other quickly—too quickly. That last kiss, burns on my lips more than the last, because in that moment in a hidden corner of my mind, I was still living with the fear that something could go wrong. Was it too heavy of a suitcase, or did I forget something in the car? To have a last chance to hug, one of those tight hugs that you would remember for the rest of your life.”
As I translate my notes from my messy original Italian writing, the pain explodes. My body starts shouting, my eyes fixated in the dark beyond my room’s window. The tide of sorrowness strikes for the unmpteeth time. As if it was possible to reclaim a kiss from a lonely night. Only two months have passed and it is still hard for me to acknowledge the fact that I cannot simply hug her—or anyone else for that matter.
“As I fly over Quebec, the tension eases and I finally feel moved. White hills emerge at times from the cover of clouds that accompany me throughout my journey—like a blanket I can finally rest on after a folly of the last period. From being quarantined with my brother in the small alpine village of Cencenighe Agordino, the funeral of my grandfather, the rush to prepare my luggage, develop my last rolls of film, the risky visit to my best friend in hospital—I’ve been lucky to even see my parents.
The clouds thin out. Flight attendants serve some sort of chicken-based snack as I sip on an incredibly large coffee. From the window I see the expanses of the regularly snow-covered fields, frozen rivers, and roads like scars in the middle of dense woods. The Gulf of Saint Lawrence flows just below the right wing of the plane. The sun. The sunlight encloses everything, making the snow shine. I fell in love with the land before having ever touched it.
Finally—a sign of hope. All the issues, worries, trouble are eventually reduced to their original size, still important, yet possible to overcome with a bit of dedication and optimism.”
I didn’t know the worst was yet to come.
Saying that quarantine upon my arrival in Canada has been the most disruptive experience in my life is not an exaggeration. As I pointed out in the first italicized paragraphs, which were written in the last days of quarantine, that experience has challenged nearly all aspects of my life, and to some extent I still have to cope with its effects.
The underlying uncertainty about the future and the impossibility of seeing the people I love undermined my character and modified my behaviour, catching me in a loop of pain and despair serving to only worsen the already bad situation. The feeling of constant anxiety replaced the feeling of calmness. My inspiration was nearly gone. Studying was nearly impossible. I began spending hours and hours, eventually entire days and nights on my phone or my computer, obsessed with technology. Counselling or calling friends did little to alleviate this situation. At a certain point, I arrived to put into question my very existence. My only hope was that once I could go out, things would improve, and I held on to this thought with all my energy.
I was wrong.
Feature Image by: Nicola Scodro
