Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 10

Journal of a Lockdown, 15 April 2020

My friends in corporate jobs who are working from home all agree: It’s exhausting. It’s not just having to work in the same physical and headspace where you live, rest, and sleep, or being around spouse and spawn every single second. It’s being connected to your office all the time, on Google Hangouts, Slack, Zoom, […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 14 April 2020

Thank you for sending me the first-look photo of Timothée Chalamet in Dune. I only got it 100 times. Here’s a photo of House Atreides. Really looking forward to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. I want to see the sandworms and navigators. The aliens in Arrival were brilliantly-designed. * * * The most valuable items in my […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 13 April 2020

This is a journalist. I’d almost forgotten what they sound like. My Olympic-level ability to fall asleep was tested last night by reports of how lockdown has affected urban poor communities in Metro Manila. The image of people who live by rooting through garbage, and now having no garbage to root through because everything is […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 12 April 2020

Piazza d’Italia con cavallo by Giorgio de Chirico, who lived through the Spanish flu pandemic Traditionally Black Saturday is the scariest day in the Catholic calendar—adults shushing children by saying “Patay ang Diyos!” (“God is dead,” and they weren’t quoting Voltaire). On this bleak day I figured I might as well have that dark night […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 10 April 2020

Sorry to inflict this on you, I kept the image small. As lockdown was beginning, we read about how Shakespeare had an amazingly productive time in quarantine during a plague outbreak. In isolation he wrote King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and Macbeth. The piece was widely circulated to keep our spirits up as we faced […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 9 April 2020

“We believe we are staying home, reading books and watching television, but, in fact, we are readying ourselves for a battle over a new reality that we cannot even imagine, slowly coming to understand that nothing will ever be the same.” Olga Tokarczuk in the New Yorker. ***** Glanced at my phone and realized that […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 8 April 2020

This sketch is here because I thought the line was “23 days” but it’s really “33 days”. Which reminds me that it’s time for the annual viewing of The Life of Brian. What was supposed to be the final quarter of lockdown is now the midpoint, and I’ve started a new notebook because the previous […]

Journal of a (Now extended to 30 April) Lockdown, 7 April 2020

Drogon critiques my journal. Woke up to dire news via Anxious Friend Viber. In the latest report to Congress the president said he could not sleep from thinking about how to address the outbreak because government has run out of money and he knows people are hungry but all he can tell them is to […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 6 April 2020

Motel by Edward Hopper at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. She knows how you feel. I was almost out of milk and butter (I am basic and still consume dairy) so I stepped out of the building and went to the 7-11. First time in 13 days that I ventured farther than the parking space. Later I […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 5 April 2020

Adam Sandler! “Doctors and nurses will save us from this mess if we get them the supplies that they need / And I hope they save us soon cause I’m really, really sick of my family.” It’s positively indecent when people are climbing the walls, but I am in a good mood. Of course I […]