I'm pretty worried. I have a thousand things to do and I can't tell anyone.
I feel so guilty, like if I were a lazy and irresponsible guy.
The last couple of weeks, I've been working in home.
The last days I went to the university, I shared space and time with four women.
Two of them are pregnant. Other is younger than me and probably she travels on a daily basis from Lerma to Mexico City and viceversa, and she's exposed to unknown viruses from unknown people.
The other woman maybe has my age. She has told me that we knew each other when we were postgraduate students, almost ten years ago. She says someday I went to the lab where she worked and a friend of her introduced us. Honestly, I dunno remember that day.
Her husband works at a hospital and they have two kids. He was exposed to COVID-19 suspicious' patients the entire week. She was snoozing and coughing all day long and she told me that she was allergic and that she had forgotten her anti histamines. I believed her.
Even though we avoided physical contact, some students went to the office. Some of them tried to give you the hand and some of them coughed and sneezed.
Also, on an everyday basis I was traveling from my house to the university and back from university on public transportation. In Lerma, there are some sort of shared cabs and I took four of them each day. Passengers were pretty close to me. Some of them coughed and sneezed, like if they were harmless behaviors. It was impossible to keep distance.
The last day I came back from university, I was OK.
The day after, I had to go to the supermarket. We we're running out of food!
We took an Über. We did what we needed to do, as fast as we could.
The supermarket was sort of empty. There were just a few customers walking here and there.
I saw an elderly couple making their shopping and I suddenly imagined that my wife and myself could be those elders at some point, and I felt excited.
Even though I have a bad feeling on that, I just can't stop thinking of one period of my life on which I can do all the stuff I love to do –writing, playing my electric guitars, reading–, just as I do now, but excluding all these horrible bureaucratic issues I sometimes have to deal with... and just giving a fuck for the entire world.
It called my attention one thing: the section of canned food was almost empty.
As we were about to pay our shopping, I started to have the chills.
Later, back in home, I felt sort of ill. I had abrupt changes of temperature and I felt weak and sleepy. I felt my bones hurting, like if I just had walked for miles under a heavy rain. I was exhausted and I thought I was about to have the flu.
On these days it's impossible to be unaware of COVID-19 symptoms' and I got worried.
Maybe I was just paranoid, but what if I was about to get sick...?, what if I would have to isolate from my wife and from the world...?, what if someone in the job had just infected me?
To things get worst, my wife is hypertensive...
I talked to my sister in law –she's a physician– and I told her how I felt and she recommended me to take some Paracetamol pills.
I had a couple of terrible nights.
I dreamt my colleague –the one who was coughing and snoozing in the real world– and myself had some sort of ill relationship. We were hiding from all the people who know us and trying to have a serious conversation. I sensed that she was pregnant and I was so afraid and I felt so stupid.
As the dream progressed, the environment became darker and colder. It seemed that the Earth was getting sick, too.
I also had hypnopompic hallucinations of my colleague and I woke up several times repeating a magic word who supposedly would end up this pandemic.
Obviously, I was febrile.
I had nightmares and I barely slept three or five hours per night.
The entire weekend, I felt so weird.
I convalesced watching some old Headbanger's Ball shows' with Alice In Chains on YouTube. It was very strange. They were premiering some videos of their 1995' eponymous album. I have heard that album several times, I like it a lot. I even own a physical exemplar of the compact disc. I bought it at El Chopo a couple of weeks ago. It's sad to realize that compact discs are in extinction pathways.
Nevertheless, I hadn't watched their videos. Neither I had seen an interview of the band around that time.
As I saw Layne Staley, with an heroin-addict appearance, trying to focus on the silly questions of Riky Rachtman, I realized that I never think of him as a contemporary of Kurt Cobain and Mark Lanegan –even though I'm a big fan of Tom Hansen's awesome novel, on which he describes, in a pretty rad way, how “heroin world” was in the early 90's–, but as a musician from another time and genre.
I supposed my opinion is influenced by the fact that someone who I really dislike introduced me to Alice In Chains and that he was crazy about Mad Season.
It was pretty strange.
And, for a couple of seconds, as I died on my bed, I felt I was fifteen years old and that I was watching for the very first time an Alice In Chains' music video. I ended up thinking about myself back then. In resume: in 1995, my life wasn't as boring as it seemed to me. I just was a damned stupid. I didn't even know how to play “Queen of the rodeo” on guitar. All I wanted to have was enough time to read poetry, to write poems and to befriend with a crazy punk rocker girl.
Now, as the disease spreads across the country and the authorities seem to give a fuck about the physicians, the small businessmen and the rest of the citizens, I have to deal with the fact that my colleagues might see me as an irresponsible lazy guy.
(Really guys, believe or not: my life would be on risk if I moved from Lerma to Mexico City, on a daily basis.)
I live in Lerma 'cause I have to teach classes almost everyday, 'cause I have academic meetings almost everyday... 'cause I have to work on a million bureaucratic issues... I don't have a car to move by my own resources and by my own risk to Mexico City. I don't even drive. I have not even had a driver's license!
Besides, I can't eat as a normal person. Moving implies many complications to me.
A couple of years ago, I had a surgery and I can't fast for more than three hours and I cannot eat the food normal people eat. Moving is not a simple option to me, right now.
My colleagues perform some experiments in Mexico City. They are allowed to do it before 14: 00. I spend three hours from my house to the lab. Public transport currently has some limited schedules. It's pretty complicated.
Hate to say so.
On this quarantine, I wake up early in the morning and I turn on the laptop and I start to work from 8:00 to almost 18:00 0r 19:00.
Usually I have a couple of meetings via Skype, at last once per week.
For two weeks I've been writing the discussion of a paper. Normally, I don't even have time to do it. I just, in general, dislike the data, but I must publish this paper, some way or another.
Right now, I have to write a protocol from a totally different research project... I have to make an awful tax process... I have to start writing at last one review from a totally different topic... I have to start to prepare virtual classes for the two courses... and I wish I could enjoy everything I do, but I feel so guilty.
I really hate it.
Heaven Beside You
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