QUAROUTINE 2: HOW SOME OF YOUR FAVES SURVIVE QUARANTINE
In this second article of this new series none other than writer and initiator of various projects Simone Zeefuik, PhD researcher, poet and writer Yousra Benfquih, columnist, writer and politician Simon(e) van Saarloos and writer, opinion maker and politician Dalilla Hermans will tell us what keeps them sane during these uncertain times.
Get inspired, but do not forget that, although it is easy to fall into the trap of hyper-productivity and activity, it is also more than fine to do nothing at all.
Your level of productivity does not define who you are.
Dalilla Hermans
“I'm a mom of 3 young children so I've been spending a lot of time actively engaging with my kids. Homeschooling, playing, letting them tell me what is on their minds all the time. It's not like I didn't do that before, but now I actually have the time to do it everyday, properly”
What did you do while in semi-loch down, that you had postponed before?I'm a mom of 3 young children so I've been spending a lot of time actively engaging with my kids. Homeschooling, playing, letting them tell me what is on their minds all the time. It's not like I didn't do that before, but now I actually have the time to do it everyday, properly. I've also started painting and drawing again, which was a passion that I completely neglected for years.
What does your day look like in quarantaine?
The kids wake us up around 6.30am, and then one of us gets up. Honestly it's been my husband most days. I sleep in a little, then go downstairs in my pajamas and spend some time hanging with my squad. I usually take a shower or a bath before lunch, try to dress up in something comfortable, but presentable. Then I cook lunch, maybe bake something and find fun activities for the kids to do in the afternoon. Later on in the day I answer emails, work on book projects, have zoom-meetings about work and try to get something done uninterrupted. That never happens, but I try everyday. Then we go out for our daily walk around the block. When we get back in I cook dinner, feed the kids, get them ready for bed. My husband tucks them in and I hurry outside to my garage which is also my ‘office’ and I write and work and video call my friends while drinking some wine. I go to bed again around midnight and that's about it.
What do you do against anxiety and all the news?
I am lucky enough to have some close friends in the medical field who keep me informed on what I really need to know. I've been using them as my 'news', and try to stay away from the media as much as possible. I'm not reading as much newsfeeds, and I've been staying away from the opinion pages all together.
What do you think we need to get through this?
I think this pandemic provides the perfect basis for a true system-switch. Now is the time to really address the flaws in our systemic mechanisms. To rethink how we view capitalism, economy, global relations. I think we need revolution. A true, bottom-up revolution. And also, as always: love. This is the time to love each other more fiercely than ever, to tell the ones we love how much we love them and to make decisions based on love first.
What are you thankful for in these times?
I'm thankful for so many things. The fact that I have a certain financial security and that my worries aren't about feeding or clothing my kids. The fact that I have a house with a garden. That I am not alone but living with my family. That this time also provides space for creativity. I am so thankful for all my privileges.
Simon(e) van Saarloos
“To desire the touch and presence and care of each other – to want, to want, to fantasize what is not yet here: it can help us formulate a demand for more, one that cannot be satisfied by capitalist growth”
Did you do something these days that you postponed earlier? If yes, what is that thing?
I’ve been trying to taste water. I never really did taste water, consciously. I was staying in Istanbul before the borders of Turkey closed, and there you’d depend on bottled water. Coming back to The Netherlands, I’ve been thinking about access to water while quarantined. I noticed the tap and shower water and its taste in my mouth because I had been without this sensation for a while. Now I try to notice the water without relating its luxurious availability to loss. It makes sense to appreciate things more after they disappear, but I wonder about the ability to appreciate extra without inducing the fear of loss and scarcity.
What does your day look like quarantined?
In some ways, similar to always. I’m always working remote until an obvious performative moment arrives – whether on stage or by publishing. What I do find hard, however, is the lack of changing roles. I love the performative element of life and like to inhabit many different roles in one day. It is hard to do that in one and the same space, but I drag the day a bit by changing outfits, gender expressions and gestures.
The immobility and dependency on measures (like gloves and wearing a mask) to go out, remind me very much of different periods of physical immobility that I’ve experienced. When I go outside, I recognize my calculative gaze – searching 1,5 meters distance – from the years using a wheelchair: can I continue on the sidewalk here, is there a ramp at the end of the street; are those bikes over there parked too close for me to pass? The awareness of space in which you half expect others to adapt, while also knowing that not all people will.
So while we withdraw to private space, I’m mainly occupied with questions about public space: which bodies are welcome there, whose labor and services continue to be used, whose physical needs are attained to? I’m worried about surveillance technology and closed borders and how their services will be accepted even more smoothly, in the name of ‘controlling the virus’. When I’m outside, I try to dance in front of a surveillance camera. There are more cameras now than there are people out. They seem a little sad, with so little to monitor.
What do you do against anxiety and all the news?
I try to ignore news that’s mostly producing numbers. Each day, an increasing number of deaths is reported. I don’t want the value of life to be determined by numbers and I don’t think we can qualitatively mourn numbers. The magnitude of our grief is not captured in it. We need other measures, less linear ones, to make sense of what is happening.
Interestingly, this question relates anxiety to the news, but I’ve also been experiencing anxiety outside. When I go out for groceries or a run, I notice myself getting anxious. I’m not afraid of people but I’m afraid of what I’m not giving or receiving – short chats, smiles, distance. Especially in the beginning, I noticed that the effort of wearing a face mask or walking across the street to create space, was received with hostility. It’s like carrying on as normal is the highest thing one can reach.
I’ve encountered quite some aggressive responses to wearing a mask. I don’t want to make a one-on-one comparison here between a mask and hijab or the legally prohibited niqab, but I think that blaming someone for creating your fear does relate to a similar history: we demand transparency, an exterior and secular rhetoric that we recognize, in order to identify what is safe and what is not. This is why prime minister Mark Rutte calls for an intelligent lockdown, because in his enlighted definition, intelligence is never a dangerous, murky space of doubt. Intelligence relates to rational control, it leads to a homogeneous ‘common sense’ and a shared conception of what’s normal.
What do you think we need to get through this?
I don’t know. I don’t think we should get through this to carry on as before. How we have been carrying on has not been sustainable. Our normal was built on inequality and the current condition does not alleviate those inequalities. At best, it’s bringing them to light. But I’m skeptical about visibility as a change maker. People have been living at the end of the world already – because they are stuck in refugee camps, because they have been pushed out of their houses – and we will see more of that. Will seeing more injustice result into less inequality? A different world is not build by making inequality visible, it’s build by dismantling the current tools we use to understand the world and by creating new ways – of seeing, of structuring, of listening. This is also why I fiercely argue against a methodology of less, of reducing one’s normal activities (something you saw in flygskam, shaming people into flying less or at least be less blatant and proud about it). Less of the same is not fundamental change.
Personally, I think we need to get dirty. We need some queer desire to disrupt some of our moralism around #stayhome, because we cannot stop to critically think about the assumed meanings of safety, control and vitality. Not everyone can behave fully in compliance to the idea of ‘reducing risks’. Some people behave like ‘model citizens’, but they will still be targeted as a threat. Cleanliness and health are political conceptions. To be clear, I’m staying inside, hoping to flatten the curve, and I also believe staying at home is an act of solidarity and love. But we should not let the narrative of control, isolation = safe, get away with us completely.
What are you thankful for in these times?
I know gratitude is an important self-care practice, but I avoid the term. I rather account for my privileges – having dependable health care, a passport that makes me legal and therefore entitled to national protection and financial support of the local government. I enjoy these privileges; they are, as Sara Ahmed writes, energy saving devices. But at the same time, my privileges correlate with exploitation. No privilege is granted without excluding others from that privilege. So while these privileges produce comforts that I’m thankful for, the structures of inequality on which my privileges mount are not a source of joy.
I’m very lucky to have a place to stay without fearing eviction, and that I stay with someone I share love and touch with. But despite realizing my luck, I am also angry. I miss interactions with strangers and the touch of other lovers. I know this is a mighty lot to ask. But I refuse to give up the desire for more; it is our fuel for political questioning, no? We need to keep that queer, non-monogamous desire alive, especially in times where living in nuclear structures – of couples, family and ‘your own immediate circle’ – is being advised by the government. Writer Clementine Morrigan just posted on Instagram about the Quebec minister of public health in Canada stating that monogamy is preferable in these times. Loving fewer people will not protect us.
We are taught to think from scarcity, our whole economy is build on the principle of scarcity and the idea of controlling this natural scarcity fuels our obsession with growth.
To desire the touch and presence and care of each other – to want, to want, to fantasize what is not yet here: it can help us formulate a demand for more, one that cannot be satisfied by capitalist growth.
One thing that reminds me of normalcy, are my crazy dreams. Each morning I wake up with so many images, voices, happenings, sexy exchanges, and facts not to be proven in the ‘real’ world. Covid-19 and fear enter my dreams as well, but waking up to these dreams always remind me there are multiple worlds.
Photography: Ashley Röttjers
Yousra Benfquih
“I also remind myself of the bigger, men-made ills of our society, that are less acute but far more harmful than the current virus, ranging from the Middle East ravages due to imperialist war aggression, or, in light of yet another young man dying a few days ago in Anderlecht, racist police violence. There are far more lethal constructions embedded in our global and national structures, but since they target only those that are perceived to be on the margins or otherwise inferior, they remain underexposed”
Did you do something these days that you postponed earlier? If yes, what is that thing?
Yes. I had been telling myself for the longest time to finally start using those meditation apps that I had downloaded years ago. I was always a bit wary of meditation, afraid it would worsen my stream of thoughts rather than allay it, but I finally garnered the courage and finished my first 10-day streak yesterday.
What does your day look like quarantined?
To be honest, it’s not that much of a stretch for me, since I am a PhD researcher and a writer. Both those capacities pretty much mean that my life consists of regular intervals of prolonged quarantine, which makes me a quarantine-expert, I guess laughs. What helps me in such times of seclusion is to build in a sense of rhythm and consistency: doing my breathing exercises in the morning, and a yoga session if my body allows for it. Setting some intentions for the day, having a slow and late breakfast, to next get to my work. In the late afternoon or early evening I always try and go for a walk to get some fresh air or soak up some sun.
What do you do against anxiety and all the news?
Although I try to stay informed, I make sure to limit my news consumption. I also remind myself of the bigger, men-made ills of our society, that are less acute but far more harmful than the current virus, ranging from the Middle East ravages due to Western imperialist war aggression, or, in light of yet another young man dying a few days ago in Anderlecht, racist police violence. There are far more lethal constructions embedded in our global and national structures, but since they target only those that are perceived to be on the margins or otherwise inferior, they remain underexposed.
What do you think we need to get through this?
On a personal level, I feel like the current crisis is extending us an invitation to really go inward. And that kind of introspective work is never easy, but it is necessary. In many ways I feel like (privileged) people are overreacting: what is it that makes them so distinctly uncomfortable with the current measures? I am convinced that, often, the restlessness many people are now complaining of has underlying roots, and it would be wise to look into to them, so that we get a better sense of what we have been suppressing and/or projecting. That, in turn, can only benefit our relationships as well as society more at large. I also think the surges of solidarity we are now witnessing is something we should aim to keep going once the dust has settled. Finally, on a more structural level, what we need is a thorough and transformative overhaul of our current system and its failures, failures which corona is laying bare very clearly, be it in terms of environmental policy or socio-economic inequalities.
What are you thankful for in these times?
I am grateful for the precise thing we are being confined to these days: the privilege of being able to retreat into a safe home. The same goes for the relationships I find myself blessed with. I feel that the global health crisis is prompting us to cultivate a praxis of grounded authenticity, to shed all the overload, and I am grateful to see that the relationships I have invested in over the years are imbedded in that kind of genuine and reciprocal connection.
Simone Zeefuik
“We need to give ourselves and each other more space. The space to be okay with not always knowing what to do, what to believe, where to go”
What did you do while in semi-loch down, that you had postponed before?
In an attempt to free it of its current “storage and laundry room”-status, I’ve started decluttering my second bedroom and visualizing how pretty it will be once it’s done. Part of the visualizing is happening on Tumblr and Instagram where I’m also looking for outfits and recipes for all the dinner parties I’ll have when the shutdown unstrangles itself. I’m also picking up my Arabic classes again and a sister may finally learn how to braid kwikwiba (cornrows, in English). Please keep in mind that all of this, and I do mean all of this, is at the mercy of my dedication to rest, relaxation and reflection. My new sport is taking a nap without putting my alarm because why not?
Also, if I feel like journaling an entire day, if I want to spend time moisturizing my hair or watching a film/series I already know by heart that all formerly mentioned activities will be put on hold. I don’t know how to “handle” a pandemic but I’m choosing peace over these draining myths of productivity.
What does your day look like in quarantaine?
I have the luxurious privilege to let many of my days depend on the emotional needs of myself and the people in my inner-inner-circle. Sometimes I plan to spend a morning to work on something for a class I’m preparing and an afternoon on my future programs for Bijlmer Parktheater. I wake up early-early, shower, moisturize my hair, bless myself with some eyebrows if I feel like it and I go to work. If at one point in that day a loved one checks in and we both feel that we need a moment together, I prioritize them and my social needs over my work schedule. I’m dedicated to learning to recentre and unrush. And yes, it’s very possible to kill your deadlines and still be not consumed with work. That 24/7 hustle, “They sleep, we grind!”-mentality? It’s rubbish.
What do you do against anxiety and all the news?
Being honest with my loved ones and saying: “Hey, I’m okay with all the horrifying news. Instead of a lot of articles, please forward me work (illustrations, poems, photo’s, etc.) that bring you joy, that soothe the spirit.” I’m blessed to be surrounded by folks who listen. I also often stop checking my DM’s and I don’t turn on the news every day.
What do you think we need to get through this?
We need to give ourselves and each other more space. The space to be okay with not always knowing what to do, what to believe, where to go. And also giving people space and not suffocate them with demands to be entertained, informed, heard, seen. We don’t know who has enough when or who’s mind is where. We sometimes overlook peoples’ options to do, move, reject the way we want them to. Be kind, give people space. Take into account that not every marginalized community has the same possibilities to refuse what they reject. I can go on and on but in short: we need forms of selfcare that include our collective well-being and we need a government that isn’t so… Pfeew, you almost made me curse!
What are you thankful for in these times?
My inner-inner circle and technology. The former because we take such good care of each other and the latter because it provides us with various ways to stay long distance-connected to each other. Last but not least, I’m thankful for a home that never feels suffocating, for people who upload films on Youtube and for never listening when people tell me I should stop buying books for a while. This nerd is stacked and I wouldn’t be able to social media fast if it wasn’t for my decent collection of literature.
