A Transformation, Told in Three Parts

    This is my end-of-the-school-year reflection, even though I just finished the first week of a new school year. Because measuring time has essentially ceased to matter in the version of the Matrix that I live in, it makes more sense to do that reflection at this point in time. Oh, Corona. You have played out two extreme scenarios I've played through my mind over the years. First, how would I respond or react if international travel permanently shutdown, and I were geographically separated from my friends and family from "back home"? Second, how would I spend my time if I were to ever take a year off of work?

    The answer to the first question is simple-- stay in place. I've been living in South America for six years, already. Although I've only been in Colombia for a year, I am home. Leaving here for the US would be more inconvenient between nearly all my possessions being in Bogota as well as the catastrophic chaos that's been expedited and aggravated by the US Federal Government. May I be part of all the powers the remove Donald Trump from the single elected position he's ever held. The end. 

    The answer to the second question isn't so cut-and-dry of an answer. That answer is changing on a day-to-day basis. I've spent over 150 days at home during this pandemic, all but four physically solo, and using each day to undergo several different transformations. To clarify, I have been able to leave my apartment at times for some shopping but there's no other reason to be out so I stay home. It is rather incredible when I reflect on what I have accomplished in this brief of a time. Then again, it makes sense to me because I am finally picking up where I left off four years ago.

Part 1: The Monk

    Four years ago, I went on the longest solo-trip of my life. It was supposed to last for seven weeks, but after five weeks I couldn't endure facing the traumas I had been long-trying to suppress nor sleeping in a different bed every three days nor eating another dinner alone while attempting to avoid the stares I received from other restaurant patrons. Finally, in the sixth, I was able to make a flight change and return to my cozy apartment up on Guangüiltagua. I look fondly on a lot of the memories I have from that trip, but I recall the whole experience with complete honesty owing to it revealed a lot that I needed to work on. Naturally this meant, after returning to Quito, I added on more work responsibilities and a master's program. It was a lot of self-isolation and self-neglect. I wasn't a great person during that time because I didn't feel like a great person. To my friends, parents, students and colleagues-- I apologize for my moodiness, selfishness and iciness. At some point, I started searching for help. None of it has really turned out to be the perfect fix for me, so far, but collectively it's helped me heal and grow. 

    It is because of that period of my life I was worried about being mandated to self-isolate. Yet, this time has been different (least of all that thankfully my apartment actually receives direct light; my last apartment did not ever). Especially when "summer" began. I enjoyed my break from video conferencing, and slipped into a loose vow of silence. I kind of get how once people consciously stop talking that they become a mute. But I also kind of get why people make those vows. The stretches of days without talking have brought me new types of awareness. People tell me all the time I either (a) move too fast or (b) do too much. And this silence has forced me to slow down. It's ineffable but it's like I have found those missing hours and minutes and seconds of days of hustle-and-bustle-- how to have it all and not be exhausted at the same time. I've achieved the greatest clarity of what future I am working toward. There's a long way to go, and I am hardly asserting I've found nirvana. Just saying I've found a new awareness and peace in this involuntary sabbatical from society. I wonder how that will change whenever there's more normalcy. 

From a poster I made when I was a small child. I asked my mom to send me a digital copy; it was a reminder I needed from myself to face this quarantine head-on.

Part 2: Dead Old White Males

    Yeah, yeah. Enough of 'em. There are reasons we learn about them still. First, they did publish some epic works and discoveries that have changed the course of history and human expression. But also, for various reasons, Indigenous knowledge systems have been lost to time... destruction of physical or oral records, incorrect attribution to the hegemonic group, separation from language and culture, or lack of technology to spread their knowledge faster and wider. I'm sure there's dozens other reasons.

    I still gotta give it to them. At one point of my evolving emotions around self-isolation and "teaching--from-home"... eureka. How on Earth did those dead white dudes hold a litany of titles, each: naturalist, poet, artist, philosopher, navigator, doctor, clergy? I have boiled the profile to two socioeconomic possibilities. In one, he is a trust-fund baby and doesn't actually have to work, so these endeavors are more like hobbies. In the other, he is broke-as-shit and doesn't care (or, more especially, works hard in spite of it) because he either has great interpersonal skills or wilderness survival skills, or both. The only entertainment that exists for either is natural or live-produced by other humans. In the hours and minutes that laid before them, the only thing to do was recopy existing literature, improve their fine motor skills, and pay attention to infinite details with the barges filled with minerals from other lands. I guarantee there's someone from a nomadic culture that figured most of the bigger ideas out millennia ago. It's mostly because of their proximity to Gutenberg that they're the poster boys of Western Education. 

    I get why they figured a lot of stuff out, because I've been spending my time the same way. Except how it would be in the 21st century. This is how I would spend that gap year,. Reading. Creating. Writing. Producing. Studying. Aligning how I spend my days to what I value. Despite the occasional repudiation I feel for the entrapping walls, they contain within everything I could possibly need and I've figured out how to get what I don't have. 

    Rather than rotting my brain on Netflix, I've swam in books and research, switching from one endeavor to another. When I am tired of gardening, I move to fish, and then planning, and then reading, and then, and then. My lack of physical activity due to confinement has extended my waking hours to between 18-20 a day, so you can imagine why I would be filling it with as much variety and stimulation as possible. I've always known that when I am given the space and time, I can come up with some pretty cool stuff. Good to know what kind of dispositions I will have for retirement, too. Maybe this will be my foil that sustains my life far past what I'm comfortable with. 

Part 3: The Butterfly

    Over 150+ days indoors, I've had the stillness to observe the gradual accumulations that've become this personal metamorphosis. Whether it is my home or myself, I've been locked away in this chrysalis like a caterpillar. What's emerging has been unexpected and, to me, beautiful.

    One of those has been my home, which I look at with pride of what I've done to create a home. Quarantine has gotten me to hang things on the walls and put out pictures of friends and family. I've Marie-Kondo'ed the heck out of my apartment... after limiting cleaning andtidying to one hour a day, within six weeks I had run out of things to put away or wipe or toss. I noticed that not only pictures and textiles, but in the colors that I am comforted and inspired by are of the Paramo and the flag colors of Ecuador & Colombia (and Venezuela, but I've not been yet). I've managed to turn my two rooms, kitchen and 1.5 baths into a perfect expression of myself. 

    The metamorphosis has been physical, too. I mentioned earlier that I've had a lack of physical activity. I've dropped weight, and it's noticeable to me. I don't really snack, so if I don't burn calories then I'm not really generating an appetite; I've been trying to combat that. Meanwhile, I found and reached out to a tattoo artist and completed a vision I'd had on that trip four years ago. It honors my memories and connection to Ecuador and the mythologies of Pacific/Andean cultures. The Spondylus representing the sea, the plant representing the land and the condor the sky. I couldn't be more pleased with the outcome, an understatement considering that for a plethora of reasons my color appointment was rescheduled eight times. 

    More importantly, the change has been internal. I've kind of solved the mysteries of my identity that were attached to my self-esteem.  I don't need to explain or justify it; perhaps it is implicit in what I've shared until now.  An example I'll provide, however, is with a physical artifact I acquired to remind me of my progress and journey. At this point, I might as well measure how much percent of my body is covered in ink; I think I'm done getting more but that could change. Piercings, on the other hand, never piqued my interest. On day 130- or 140-something of quarantine, I decided to officially make a change to that by getting one on my right ear lobe. Firstly, I'd always been self-conscious of how much that ear stuck out, and it's my way of drawing more attention to it so I just get over it completely, already. When I look at it, it's so cute and makes me giggle. The other purpose it has is to help me with embracing and expressing my queerness (because it takes too much energy to be anything other than myself). At times, I've hid it (my Tech students.... yes, I am "sweet") or not taken advantage of the moments I could have just told some important people myself, before it was too late. I've wasted opportunities to be the person I needed when I was younger. If I can decide to quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey, I can decide to not be fearful of being myself at all times. 

Quarantine was not a choice; how I spent my time was.