Filipinos #CopingWithCovid — Tony Robles, North Carolina

The fol­low­ing is part of Cecil­ia Brainard’s series, Fil­ipinos Cop­ing with Covid.

As of Octo­ber 9, 2020, there are 36,625,213 con­firmed Covid 19 cas­es world­wide, with 1.056,186 deaths. The US has 7,611,722 con­firmed cas­es and 212,840 deaths. (source: John Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty of Medicine).

Fil­ipino Amer­i­can poet, Tony Rob­les shares with us the fol­low­ing. He had lived in San Fran­cis­co for decades but now lives in North Carolina.

Covid-19:  An Encounter with a Bee during Quarantine

by Tony Robles

Copy­right 2020 by Tony Robles.

It’s quar­an­tine, shel­ter in place–the stay at home order. I am blessed to have a home as many do not. Don’t go out­side we are warned, do not gath­er in large groups so as not to spread Covid-19, aka the Coro­n­avirus. With this dik­tat comes an assort­ment of mixed mes­sages. We are told not to wear pro­tec­tive masks then we are told to wear them. We are told that the droplets from a cough or sneeze can trav­el 6 feet and to give oth­ers that amount of “social dis­tance” upon encoun­ter­ing them. Then I read in the Wash­ing­ton Post that the droplets can trav­el as far as 8 feet while oth­er reports indi­cate the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Covid-19 can be spread by par­ti­cles emit­ted via the mouth dur­ing nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion. Regard­ing the spread via sneez­ing and cough­ing, I came across the term cough droplet bal­lis­tics, used to describe the endeav­or of observ­ing and mea­sur­ing the length and tra­jec­to­ry of droplets ema­nat­ing from a cough or sneeze. I also came across a study by the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy that referred to the very phe­nom­e­non of coughs and sneezes as vio­lent expi­ra­to­ry events and the issuance of flu­ids there­of as mul­ti­phase tur­bu­lent buoy­ant clouds with sus­pend­ed droplets of var­i­ous sizes. I have always been cog­nizant of my cough­ing and sneez­ing in pub­lic, but not all peo­ple are. Giv­en our pan­dem­ic and the care­less coughers and sneez­ers among us, stud­ies such as these should not go unnoticed.

I try to use com­mon sense, keep­ing my dis­tance, not cough­ing or sneez­ing on or near my fel­low human.  I recent­ly saw a video clip of a well known tel­e­van­ge­list giv­ing a ser­mon. He rebuked Covid-19, issu­ing a very strong and impas­sioned puff of air through puck­ered lips, assert­ing, “Covid-19, I blow the wind of God on you.” What tra­jec­to­ry the wind trav­elled is not yet known; how­ev­er, it has since been advised that par­ti­cles from the mouth and/or nose can trav­el far­ther than the 6 feet that had been pre­vi­ous­ly indi­cat­ed by the CDC; that par­ti­cles could per­haps trav­el 4 times that dis­tance. As I watched the clip of the pas­tor, I felt a vague gush of air pass across my face . Not pos­si­ble, I thought, as this was a video clip. But the winds of para­noia accrue in cri­sis and man­i­fest itself in many ways. I hope some­one can inform the good pas­tor of this before the next ser­vice. With infor­ma­tion fly­ing around—6 feet away and beyond– I did the only sen­si­ble thing; I washed my hands at least 7–8 times using the CDC method. Hand­san­i­ty informed by fear.

I lis­ten to news reports at home. Yesterday’s news seems a life­time away. News arti­cles pop off like fire­crack­ers as well as video clips claim­ing a cure and, of course, the belief that this is being caused by radi­a­tion from 5G tow­ers A few weeks ago the sit­u­a­tion seemed far away. Peo­ple con­tract­ed the virus in Korea, Italy, Iran, Spain and oth­er coun­tries. The num­bers of pos­i­tive Covid-19 cas­es in the US grew and sur­passed all coun­tries. But some­how, in this cor­ner of West­ern North Car­oli­na it seemed as if that real­i­ty was over there, while we were over here. My morn­ing rou­tine is check­ing the news, check­ing the num­bers of pos­i­tive cas­es in my coun­ty. Not long ago we had less than 10 pos­i­tive cas­es with no deaths. That num­ber is climb­ing. As of today there are 99 pos­i­tive cas­es and 6 deaths. This is small com­pared to New York, the epi­cen­ter of the pan­dem­ic in the US with 6 thou­sand new cas­es in the last 24 hours and over 104,000 con­firmed cas­es. Detroit bus dri­ver, Jason Har­grove was coughed on by a pas­sen­ger and died the fol­low­ing week but not before post­ing an impas­sioned plea in a video clip lament­ing that some among us–in spite of the pandemic–do not seem to care and implored peo­ple to be mind­ful. Gro­cery clerk Leilani Jor­dan of Mary­land died after con­tract­ing the virus. Her shift involved serv­ing seniors in their des­ig­nat­ed shop­ping hours. Leilani stayed on the job in order to serve the elder­ly cus­tomers despite the Covid-19 virus and despite hav­ing cere­bral pal­sy. 2,200 peo­ple have died in nurs­ing homes. This virus is hit­ting African Amer­i­cans and Lati­nos dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly in many cities includ­ing New York, Chica­go, New Orleans and Detroit. Peo­ple in deten­tion cen­ters and in cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ties have con­tract­ed the virus in crowd­ed con­di­tions with lit­tle or no pro­tec­tive gear. I sit at home and think of the virus as over there. I look out­side at the red bud tree near my house. For the first time I notice it–really see it. I turn on the radio and hear the announcer’s voice say: Stay home, stay updat­ed, stay iso­lat­ed. The pan­dem­ic is hap­pen­ing over there and I real­ize that over there is over here.

I sit in my liv­ing room. I think of a con­ver­sa­tion I had with my father the pri­or week. I nev­er thought I’d expe­ri­ence any­thing like this in my life­time, he said, adding, “When I was grow­ing up there was polio but they knocked it out. Eisen­how­er had that.” “No, dad, It was Roo­sevelt” I say.

I feel sore­ness in my throat. Is it the virus? I hyper­ven­ti­late, boil water for tea. I take a sip. No sore throat, whew! I look around my liv­ing room; iso­lat­ed, know­ing that many do not have this lux­u­ry. I look at the ceil­ing count­ing the specks in the over­head tiles where I see some­thing hov­er­ing. I put on my glass­es. It’s a bee. I am shel­ter­ing in place. How did a bee get in here? I grab a broom, lift it to the ceil­ing and swat at it. It hov­ered more elud­ing my awk­ward swipes. It spoke.

Bee: Man, put that broom down!

Me: How’d you get in here?

Bee: How do you think?  Through the front door.

Me: what do you want?

Bee: Hey, I’m look­ing to self isolate

Me: Why?

‘Bee: Have you heard of CCD?

Me: Yeah, that’s when you obsess over details and order­li­ness and—

Bee: you’re think­ing OCD

Me: Sor­ry

Bee: Keep­ing talk­ing like that and we’ll both get PTSD

Me: What’s CCD?

Bee: Colony Col­lapse Dis­or­der.  We just dis­ap­pear from the hive

Me: How?

Bee: Lots of rea­sons.  Par­a­sites, pes­ti­cides, infec­tions, viruses—the damn pes­ti­cides make us weak to sur­vive some diseases.

Me: Tough break

Bee: You know it.  And toss in cli­mate change and you have a train wreck.

As the bee spoke, it was con­sci­en­tious, mind­ful to leave an ample amount of social dis­tance between us.  It flew to my kitchen cabinet.

Bee: You got a lot of tuna in here, enough to last a few months.

Me: It’s bum­ble bee, you want some?

Bee:  Hell no, I ain’t no can­ni­bal but I’m essential

Me: What about some fruit?

Bee: is it ripe?

Me: Yes

I sat while the bee chose a spot on the wall, tak­ing in the sur­round­ings.  The bee was a fan of oldies.  It want­ed to hear that old song called “Buzz Buzz Buzz” by the Hol­ly­wood Flames.  We must have lis­tened to it a half dozen times. Then I told it that I was pass­ing the time renam­ing clas­sic songs to give it a social dis­tance twist.  He thought most of the titles were corny but he did take a lik­ing to “Don’t put your hand in the hand of the man (who didn’t wash it)” and “Papa’s got a brand new mask.”  It felt good not to be alone. Then it asked.

Are you scared?

Me: Yes

Bee: I hear you.  I am too.

Me: The pres­i­dent says he wants us to go back to work.  But I think to myself—go back—go back to what?  I don’t want to go back to the same world.  This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to change it.  We can’t go back to what it was before.  What it was before is why it is the way it is now, falling apart.

The bee hov­ered again, bequeath­ing more buzzes, estab­lish­ing hov­er­nance over my space to which it now belonged. It land­ed, this time clos­er to me.

I hear you, it said.

After a few min­utes we put on that old song again and we laughed. We talked about the new world we want­ed to go back to: a beau­ti­ful crazy new world.

And the bee hov­ered towards the ceil­ing: buzz buzz buzz

© 2020 Tony Robles

~

Read also:
Coro­n­avirus: The Begin­ning, by Cecil­ia Brainard
How Fil­ipinos Are Cop­ing With Covid, Part One (Cecil­ia Brainard, Pos­i­tive­ly Filipino)
How Fil­ipinos Are Cop­ing With Covid, Part Two (C. Brainard, PF) 
How Fil­ipinos Are Cop­ing With Covid-19, Part Three (C.Brainard, PF)

Covid-19: An Encounter with a Bee Dur­ing Quarantine

Inter­views follow:
Lia Fer­aren, Germany
Tere­sa Con­cep­cion, Canada
 Ofe­lia Gelve­zon Tequi, France
Reine Marie Bon­nie Melvin, France
New Zealand: Jay Mon­til­la & Moni­ka Tawngdee
Lin­da Ty-Casper, Mass­a­chu­setts, USA
Bar­bara Ann Jacala, San Diego, CA, USA
Bri­an Ascalon Roley, Ohio, USA
Eliz­a­beth Ann Besa-Quiri­no, USA
Inter­view of Cecil­ia Brainard by 95.9 Star FM Bacolod (DJ Bil­lie), USA

Inter­views of Fil­ipino Amer­i­cans #Cop­ing­With­Covid

All of the above links are part of the Philip­pine Covid Archive of Fil­ip­inas Her­itage Library.

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