Living in Lockdown- Movie Nights

There is very little to do in terms of fun and having a personal life outside of work since being in lockdown. I’m so fed up of being told this is an opportunity to do things I have not gotten the time to do, because I simply don’t want to do more than what I am already doing. What I want to do is relax but that is proving to be difficult nowadays.

There was a time I could easily watch a TV show or movie and be transported into its world, escaping my own but now I find it harder to recapture that feeling. What has helped is watching movies from the 80’s and 90’s, a time where COVID didn’t exist and things seemed slower and simpler than the hustling world of today, that demands you to still work like nothing is happening around us. I just get a warm, fuzzy feeling from those decades and I am guilty of romanticising the past.

Credit for my exposure to most of these movies definitely goes to my parents, whom I watched them with as a kid and have stayed with me since. I felt like I was being initiated into the club of “Good Movies You Have to See”, as my parents would call them. If I look back at it now, it is very endearing.

Now my nightly ritual after switching off my work laptop and wrapping up another work day has been to get into bed, with dinner, and watch a movie. Here are some of the films I have found solace in of late (in bold) and ones I plan on watching:

• Jerry Maguire
• The Firm
• Baby Boom
• Rain Man
• A Few Good Men
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
• Sleepless in Seattle
• You’ve Got Mail
• Planes, Trains and Automobiles
• Throw Momma from the Train
• Ghostbusters
• Ghost
• Sister Act
• A Perfect Murder

I am very open to recommendations and other movie suggestions so comment below if there’s a movie you love from the 80’s and 90’s! I’ll add them to the list 🙂

Study Bunny

Study Bunny

Corona Maison

Drew this a year ago when we first went into lockdown, a time I was daydreaming about an endless backyard and a breezy living room

Work from Home

Work from Home

The Tapestry of Trying Times

In the tapestry of a lifetime, rough river waters course through.
The rapids woven with satin stitches of cerulean and teal blues,
jutted with jagged rocks

Trials, tribulations and trying times captured in the knots of frayed thread.
Allow your eyes to follow their meandering, see how slowly they smoothen, un-crinkling the dread.

You can see the strength of leaving a loveless relationship,
in the marmalade-tinged tulips.
The magic of tales spun like yarn to buoy a hopeless spirit
in the plum peninsula.
In the periwinkle waters,
the calm of relaxed shoulders after lifelong lessons of being on guard
etched into neural substrate.
And after years of trauma imbibed in the body, the boldness of just breathing
and simply being, in the snow whites.

And most of all, you will see the tapestry telling you
‘times are hard, but we are hardy.’

I hate us.

There’s a metallic taste in my mouth

as I think of you.

Something sickly and sour

as I remember what it felt like

to love you.

I don’t want to write today

because I have no words
that can easily replace
resting my hands on your waist
as we fall asleep.
Or how it feels to be grazed
by your stubble,
as we shrug off our slumber.

And I don’t want to write to you today,
no messages or little laughs on text.
Because there are no words
to give me what I’d like right now.
A hug, a hand held, a cheek pecked.

So there,
I don’t want to talk.
I don’t want to communicate.
Not with my words.
I am fed up of their inadequacy.
And I so desperately wish
you could kiss me
to shut me up right now,
and spare me the disappointment
of capturing this in words,
only to fail all over again.

Today

This morning, I roll over
out of bed,
dragging feet into a kitchen
to fix myself a cup of tea.

It’s early enough
to suck in fresh, cool air,
replacing the mentholated one
that I quit.

Grey speckled birds rustling leaves,
high above swept streets.
Coriander growing in the earthen pot,
threads of it tangling,
like my words when I try
to capture what you make of me.
You water, I twine.
Tendering in kind.

The roots don’t truly
feel like mine.

72 days

Of living in this new normal
Of sleeping with a racing heart,
difficult to quieten, to murmur to sleep.
Shhhh, I soothe, but…

It beats on, as time bleeds
like water on ink, sinking
into the pages of an empty calendar.
One day, two days, three days, four.
A week, a month…
and then one moment, I realised
I was not counting any more.

Counting days, nor goals,
nor things to look forward to.
How long until…? How long?
Hardly bearing this agony of waiting
for turbulences to smoothen.
Seeming so futile,
like smearing a crinkled sheet
trying to clean it of crevices.

I weep.

Weeping at the reality of screens
for work, for love, for everything in between.
My eyes are tired of the ‘almostness’
of granulated faces.
We must make do, at least we have these
pixels and echoes of sound
to convince ourselves we are not alone.
We must continue the grand deception,
for work, for love, for everything in between.

And in that between,
a despondence settling in.
Unpacking and unlayering itself
on my bedroom floor,
hanging in the air, wafting through the door.
How long are you visiting? How long?
Please leave. Go on…

I know not where it’ll go,
or who it’ll visit next ,
but I cannot entertain this guest.

A monthly mourning

Once a month, I get on a bus travelling
four hundred and eighteen kilometres,
to.

To cigarettes, coffee and sex in the morning
Sunlight filtering through orange curtains
Bike rides down empty streets
Hot and humid weather
Sunsets, beaches and unshakeable sand.
Sitting by windows, stealing wine drunk kisses
and tracing circles on the back of your hand.
Walking dirt paths to a hazy periwinkle view
To a reprieve from what I left,
to what’s been missing,
to you.

And then once a month, I get on a bus travelling
four hundred and eighteen kilometres,
away.

Only to do it all over again,
in another thirty days.

Each time, a mourning ritual.
A mourning for when things were simpler.
When there was no dread of missing you,
before I’ve even left.
When there was no counting of
how many hours we have left.

It is a loss meant to be mourned.
It must.
And mourned it is.
Each and every month.