By Sorina Szakacs I open my eyes and look at my phone. It’s 5:30 a.m., April 7th, day 19 of Los Angeles’ “Safe at home order”. My days are usually the same, even on weekends. I wake up before the sunrise, make a cup of coffee, and go on the balcony. I sit there until the sun sets, alternating coffee with wine, reading, and writing. I hear a door slam. I get up and look toward the street like those old bored at home ladies, ready to see some juicy…
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A Spring Without Shoes
By Sharon Stello Cooking, dishes, laundry, TV, reading, repeat. My boyfriend is an essential worker, still going into the office, so I’m at home alone until he returns. One day blurs into the next and I can’t help feeling like a housewife in the 1960s-era “Mad Men” show I finally had time to watch. Of course, during this modern-day quarantine, we have the benefit of technology, so Facebook memes, Zoom game days, streaming television and Instagram live concerts also fill my hours. I have no children to homeschool and I’ve…
Read MoreBy Paul Rogers “We’re ordered to stay home,” announced the text message, surprising me in the mostly black-spot wilderness of Indian Canyon. I strode on a few more steps; down to the seasonal stream that was the turnaround point of my hike. Recent rain propelled it across the otherwise dusty fire road with incongruous, picturesque purpose. “Okay,” I responded flatly, as not to inflame panic. “Will be home by dark.” A futile orange circle spun next to my words – they probably wouldn’t reach my wife before I did. It…
Read MoreCOVID 19: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pandemic
By Matthew Rodriguez Every time I unlock my phone, the negatives seem to pile up — the worldwide shutdown, the increasing number of deaths and the seemingly endless supply of bad news. However, I try to focus on the positives — the extra time I have to play videogames, the FaceTime calls with my parents and the times I sneak out of quarantine to watch romantic comedies with an old fraternity brother. I can’t do much else. Prior to being locked-up in my West-LA apartment, blocks away from my favorite…
Read MoreWe are the Quaranteens
By Olivia Remedios DEAR Coronavirus, I suppose we should introduce ourselves: We are the Quaranteens. Our world was never prepared for a collision like this, although there were signs that could have changed everything. Since you are sticking around for a while, closing down schools and putting families out of jobs, we wanted to tell you a few things about us. We know that no one asked for this, but specifically we didn’t ask for our childhood to be ripped away right when we thought it was time to say…
Read MoreHow I Learned to Stop Worrying and Lean In to the Coronavirus
By Jon Regardie In the time of the coronavirus, many of us have one thing in common: We’d do just about anything to gain access to Doc Brown’s time-traveling DeLorean from the Back to the Future movies. Just think— those doors swing up instead of out! Of course, it would also be nice to pull a Marty McFly and zip out of 2020 and into the past or the future, and to escape the incessant conversations and dark inner thoughts related to illness, death, quarantine, lost work and depleted bank…
Read MoreAdapting Amazingly Well
By Marieke Oudejans When I was seven and a half years old, we moved from a small town in the Netherlands to the big bustling city of Bangkok, Thailand. I was woefully unprepared, but adapted amazingly well. The farewell gift from my classmates had been a collection of their drawings depicting my future life. It showed me in front of a wooden house on stilts, lounging in a hammock strung to palm trees, holding monkeys in my lap. This was an era when people did not travel far. No one…
Read MoreBy Rachel Monge The coronavirus took away my prom, graduation ceremony and my 18th birthday party. Although, those were once in a lifetime moments I would not ask for them back but instead I would ask for the rest of America to wake up and move forward. I’ve been working part-time at a grocery store since the summer of my junior year. However, the pandemic closed down my mother’s factory and I was left to work full-time to keep our household afloat. Working 6 days out of the week during…
Read MoreANGELS IN LOCKDOWN
By Devra Maza Writers are naturals at social distancing. We live in our minds, tossing thoughts out like lifelines, while transforming blank pages into stories. So when a “stay-at-home” order was issued in Los Angeles to slow the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus, sending everyone home to stare at computers, I couldn’t help but think, “Now everyone’ll know what it feels like to be a writer.” I was deep in research on March’s Friday the 13th (go figure) when the public library and Getty museum abruptly closed. Not slated…
Read MoreHappiness
By Rochelle Levy Happiness (in this most unsettling time) is A gift at the front door—toilet paper, Kleenex and a roll of paper towels Telling my boss that my facetime is “broken” so that she doesn’t know that I am still in my pajamas When my grand daughter Charlie tells me that what she misses most during the week is “me” Answering every opinion poll that appears in my email account, making me feel quite important to someone. . . Rain, lots of rain. . .that I stay dry inside and…
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