Life Bottled Up

Like many around me, I have learned a great deal since the NBA canceled its season on March 11.

Different groups assign different start dates to the COVID-19 crisis: epidemiologists saw it coming since December, when citizens of Wuhan began appearing with strange pneumonias; Senator Richard Burr (R-NC, no relation) seemingly saw it coming since February 13, when he cashed out of the market after a senate pandemic briefing; and people with assets saw it coming on March 16, when the markets had their third worst day ever.

Young sports fans knew this was real the night the league took basketball away.

Within the hours after, fourteen friends and I called off a trip to New Orleans rather than risk stumbling into a quagmire in the bayou. Yes, the NBA likely raised more alarm bells in my demographic than Anderson Cooper, Lester Holt, and Walter Cronkite combined. Our news comes from all over, including satire shows and athletes who don't "shut up and dribble." At least we're getting it.

Since whenever we all agreed this is a BFD, we've learned new terms like social distancing and flattening the curve. I am, it is worth noting, genuinely scared, but the best I can do is to stay healthy and stay at home. Many of my peers in quarantine have tried to learn more new things beyond these two gerunds, seeking a silver lining inside the raincloud of disease and isolation.

As a deeply pessimistic optimist and alleged lifelong learner, I began to search for such linings, if only to melt them down and counterfeit silver dollars.

This all explains how I found myself asked to enter a "philosopher's squat" halfway through my fourth virtual yoga class of the week. This was a basically normal squat, but a touch wider and somehow, fancier.

I found that, with my hips open, my hands twisted together, and a general sense of instability, this was not the worst position for thinking. At a minimum, thinking here beat tossing and turning in bed, fabricating memories of licking shopping carts during my latest trip to the grocery store. It's hard to not feel like you're next if you're a neurotic whose usual hygiene is best described as adequate.

Down here for eight breaths, a series of unconnected thoughts crossed my mind. Following a teacher with impossibly large lungs gave me ample time.

I am in the middle of a few weeks' extended vacation I had requested from work. Originally, I was to fill the time with all sorts of adventures across the West Coast and Hawaii.

Now, I'm telling myself that I'd better be able to touch my toes before this thing ends.

I had been overdue for a haircut, and there's no telling when I'll be able to get one next. I am therefore combing my hair every day for the first time in my life. The philosopher in this squat says the comb represents the two sides of this hullabaloo: time and control. I have plenty of time to comb my hair, and I want terribly to control something. Yet, my hair springs back to bedhead every time.

Instead of yoga music, whatever that means to you, I heard songs 456 through 472 on Rolling Stone's dubious "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list. "Surrender" by Cheap Trick came on a bit too close to the end of the workout, but mercifully after the worst of it. I'm approaching the 31st hour of listening, at which point I'll have heard everything I need to.

Around breath six, it hits me. The whole thing stinks of malicious genie. I have for years felt overwhelmed by the impossible quantities of music, tv, and books there are to consume. How on earth could anybody listen to all 500 of the greatest songs ever, let alone the top 500 albums of all time? I will surely grow old without hearing, say, every last B-side on the four-disc super-deluxe edition of Rumors by Fleetwood Mac.

All I wished for was time, and the genie gave it to me.

I am of course grateful that my loved ones and I seem to be in good health so far. I am grateful that our experience of this crisis therefore has been idleness if not idyll. In the evenings, I pace my room, picking up a book and putting it back down. Am I… bored?

I do yoga in my apartment, where I burn sandalwood for the sake of ambiance. I refer to the floor in my apartment as "the earth," and I mean it.

I have nothing but time, and the genie is off somewhere laughing at me for getting stuck in this philosopher's squat.

I am not enjoying this philosopher's squat. I wish I hadn't learned it. The genie has exposed me as a fraud, a naked emperor uninterested in learning new things. I haven't read all my books, and now, I'm not so sure I want to.

I'm stuck inside with nothing to do but listen to all the music, watch all the tv, and read all the books I could have ever wanted, with no pressure whatsoever from school or work. Yet, I'm kvetching. I am a fraud.

"And slowly, slowly, rise out of your squat to honor your body, slowly."

I shot upwards. The blood rushed to my head, and my vision clouded over. I braced myself on the wall to avoid falling over, knowing that everybody is too busy with the public health emergency to give stitches to a so-called yogi who failed to honor his body and incurred the karmic punishment of a split eyebrow.

I'd better pump the breaks and stop speeding.