For a writer, it seems isolation/quarantine should be an ideal situation to write for hours every day, day in day out. Stores, parks, gyms, theaters are all closed; there’s no place to go, and the computer is ready and waiting. 

Then why, as the weeks have passed, do I have such a hard time sitting at the computer?  Why have I begun to feel wooden?  Why do I look at the news about COVID19 several times a day even knowing the confusion of information makes me feel like I’m inside the circus fun house?  I distract myself with Wordscapes; I scrub the kitchen sink when it doesn’t need scrubbing; I organize drawers; I pack my suitcases although I know I’m not leaving for at least a month. 

Quarantine happened. I did what I was supposed to do. In the little island of our apartment, I organized and made a schedule.  I make my bed, I drink coffee, I exercise, I eat breakfast, I try to write, I exercise, I eat an early supper, I go to bed.  I sweep, I scrub, I hang the laundry on our porch, I roast vegetables.  Little effort is required of me to maintain my needs. And the tasks I do, I do with a real, but really fleeting sense of accomplishment.

Why does the sameness of the my very-well-organized days, which allow me more freedom to write than I have ever had, leave me dull and wanting? 

Robinson Crusoe. On the surface, the analogy is ridiculous, I know. His “quarantine” was 1000 X more restrictive than mine, but maybe there is at least one parallel with these dull days. 

Crusoe’s behavior in his first months on the island was, by necessity, mechanistic. He needed to survive, to live. Ingenious in his attempts, he arranges his living space, searches, finds, and prepares food. He creates a dwelling/a life if not luxurious, at least comfortable. And, like the two of us, he lives in an emotionally closed system, his “conversation” culled from the mobius strip of his own emotions. 

Until he sees the footprint in the sand. 

Another person enters, and the phlegmatic world of singular survival and internal monologue changes in an instance. The book, until the footprint, is a fascinating survival guide and diary. After the footprint it becomes a story of human conflicts, racial prejudices, passions, fears, tension, values, and ultimately, friendship. 

This is the point in the book that in its extreme example, illuminates in reverse, writing during quarantine. 

The key is Friday. When Crusoe sees the footprint in the sand, his wooden world shifts. He is not alone! The sameness of the days in which he ingeniously builds, plants and fishes is shattered by his act of courage against the cannibals, by the presence of other humans. The emotions of human interchange enter the previously mechanistic world, where the reader saw only bursts of an emotional life. The challenges of human interactions arise: fear of others, confusion, uncertainty, demand for a courage that tests his compassion, and from then on decisions of interaction: the challenge of having power, of figuring out how to apply that power, the dance of getting to know/trust another human being, and ultimately the development of caring, not just for a built environment, but for another live person. The need to protect, the need to outwit the enemy, the need to spy and plot. 

These are the things of novels, of poems, of stories. They happen in the swirl of friends, enemies, acquaintances, unknown others, and simply put, I miss them, even today in the gentle quarantine of 2020, I have a partner in this quarantine, but after years of marriage we are something of a closed system, if  in fact a delightful closed system. There is nothing beyond us. We walk out disguised by mask and hat and gloves. On the street, the only dance is the quickstep when we skirt round each other as we pass. We do not meet friends, we have no misunderstandings in our half-learned Hebrew to delight or embarrass or surprise;  the flesh of culture / conflicts/ friendships has dissipated — no groups gather, at the store we stand online 2 meters apart each waiting patiently, silently so unlike the crowding bustle of Israelis in pre-COVID times. Walking the few hundred meters we are allowed from the apartment, our conversation dwindles to our own private interests or questions for the pharmacist or to repeat our member number at the grocery store.  

The apartment could be an apartment anywhere, the air blows through, the laundry gets done, dinner is fixed. I attend to my / our needs in the most ingenious way I can imagine, but the challenges that excite my emotions, aggravate my heart, and ignite my imagination are the people, the culture around me – and this is true no matter where I live.  It’s not that I don’t see people; it’s that I’m not involved with them, with their stories. It’s that I can’t touch them, can’t see my children’s expressive faces in person, laugh with my grandchildren, hug my friend’s on greeting. The gestures on the screen are flat; the tears of stories are pretend. This isolation, so much richer than Crusoe’s hardwearing years is deadening. 

So, I’ve decided: I’m just in the wooden days. I’ll keep the basics together and look forward to a tumbled, chaotic, haywire flesh-and-blood reality where, when I want to write, I have to waltz through the luscious flow of life.