Not as Easy as ABC
A Classical Lexicon of What’s Getting Us Through this Pandemic
April is over, and I see no lilacs in this dead land. My state university is off to a running start with slashing budgets. Mandatory furloughs — grad students are thankfully exempted — will mean more work for less pay in the months to come. Halfway through our department’s online “commencement” this week, Zoom cut out because we haven’t sprung for an institutional account. We couldn’t applaud or raise a glass or be together one last time with PhD students we’ve worked and taught with for six years, and not everyone was lucky enough to have future plans to report.
Our students deserve so much more than we can give them. I want so much more than what we have. Even just a sunny day would be nice. As I wrap up my eighth week of isolation, I don’t know how I’ll handle much more of this suspended animation, with nothing to look forward to but more certainty about the scale of the disaster.
On down days like this, I call a dear friend. She tells me that, when her eldest child was near death, she looked around the hospital room and thought how little we really need to stay alive. Air, water, a peanut butter sandwich. Shelter, and warmth, and a change of clothes. We paragons of animals, building castles in the air, are underneath it all a pretty resilient species: tough, like the earth we came from.
And then I think of the applications pouring into the new SCS/WCC COVID-19 Relief Fund, with requests for help securing housing, food, physical and mental health. These are elemental needs, not wants, from classics grad students and contingent faculty across North America. It’s a heroic program, and I’m proud of everyone who’s helped. But what will happen to all the ones we can’t fund? What will they do if we, and others, don’t come through?
I have no idea. I don’t know how any of us are going to get through this, or what world we’ll find on the other end. But for me, the only sunshine that cuts through this deepening drear comes from people like you. Readers and friends, colleagues and students, who give me a reason to get up and write.
Amidst all we’ve lost, one good thing I’ve found is Twitter. Late to the party as usual, I joined a couple weeks ago. I think of it less as a buzzing hive (that image is so often used to dehumanize) than an ongoing coffee klatsch or cocktail party I can dip in or out of in a back room of my brain. Bored? Stressed? Need company? Open the door, hang out and recharge. Then get back to whatever you were doing with slightly fresher eyes. It’s also a wonderful way, in the dearth of other interaction, to feel camaraderie and share information. Hannah Čulík-Baird makes a great case for its value to academics. And the good people on #ClassicsTwitter are the grown-up version of the cafeteria lunch table I never had, or the grad-school support group I did: organizing happy hours, celebrating one another’s achievements, sharing everything from professional advice to guilty binge-watches. (We’re eagerly awaiting Ovid and the Art of Love, which is somehow set in Detroit.)
I recently polled classicists on Twitter about the foundational needs, joys, and problems that are on the minds behind their screens during this pandemic. And then I mixed them all together, so nobody would know how many screaming kids or glasses of bourbon we/I/you shared. Below is a collectively-authored snapshot of where we are as a community in this time of quarantine: a hundred little kisses blown on the digital breeze as the suns set and rise on our locked-down lives.
Many thanks to all who contributed; some entries are modified, but you can trace authors and originals via #ClassicsTwitter and @global_classics. This abecedarium of our priorities and preoccupations is more proof, as if we needed it, that life’s #NotEasyAsABC, or 123. We need so much, and so little, to live our life of the mind. But one foundational element we need, and can give without accounting, is ourselves.
A is for Applicants and donors to the SCS/WCC COVID-19 Relief Fund, to All who contributed to this Abecedarium, and to Anyone who’s helped someone else feel less Alone.
B is for Bourbon, small Batch, by the Barrel.
C for Clippers with which we shave our own heads. C is for Cats who get us out of bed.
D is for Domi, and the Discipuli we miss seeing in person. Hopefully they will come out of this having learnt this particular usage of the locative. Quid domi facis? Ego domi maneo. Qui sunt domi tecum?
E is for Emotionally Exhausted. And for Exercise, which was something we could live without, until we found out we could’t.
Ϝ is for Ϝοιδε μοι, as in, “it seemed best to me” to take a nap, but I violated this decree by responding to work email and knitting till midnight while binge-watching Community. (Shameless attempt to score a digamma.)
F is for Fēlēs, nomine “Faustus,” cui forti Fortuna favet: formosus est et frequenter sentit felix. Sed nolite falli! Faciliter fascinatur fragmentis et foliis.
G is for the Global scale of the pandemic, and the new orientation of Classics. For Gaudium and Gratias, the joy and gratitude we feel for being able to “see” others virtually during this time of isolation. And G is for my Girls who fly paper airplanes through my classes, and remind my students of Nemesis.
H is for Hair that we wash now and then, hair that won’t get a cut til we’re open again. And H is for Hestia, hearth-goddess great, who’s always at Home and happy to wait. (Whether that Home is a Home Office, Home Daycare, Home Gym, Home Prison, Home Sanctuary, or all of the above.)
I is for Internet, which equally giveth (camaraderie, companionship) and taketh away (our time and tired eyesight).
J is for feeling Jittery. And J is for the divinely-derived months June and July, when we might finally emerge and see the sky.
K, of course, is for Kids. And less obviously, Kimchi — because toilet paper, masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer aren’t the only things in short supply.
L is for the Libraries that are closed, and the Learning Management Systems that have taken their place. (Pick your favorite — or your poison?) L is for Latin Lessons on the Proto-Indo-European roots differentiating the words vir, virī; vis, __, vim and vīrus, vīrī. Not to be confused!
M is for Migraines triggered by excessive screen time. M is for Mute because nobody can remember to turn theirs off when it’s their turn to speak, or on when there’s background noise. M is for Minimus and Minima, missing their Mouse family.
N is for Negotium, that which is not otium. And for Nero, the original Italian porch musician.
O is for going Open access, Open source, Open code. The crisis shows us how important it is to share our research and protect our data — e.g. by not using malicious tools. Or, O is for the OCD exacerbated by looking at our surroundings 24/7 (and Z is for the Zoloft dosage that just can’t cover it anymore).
P is our most Popular letter in this Pandemic. P is for Pliny the Elder, both the beer and the author with his quaint home remedies getting us through grocery shortages and inspiring us to solve problems creatively while stuck at home (domi). And Pliny the Younger, who social-distanced like a Pro at Lake Como, and writes that both study and idleness arise from leisure — not that our current social distancing can be called otium. P is for the Pottery Wheel on which we Practice experimental archaeology. And P is for the Puppy who just wants to Play … or the one who won’t stop licking us during Zoom calls that last all day.
Q is for the Quiche I made out of leftovers and eggs and the last milk we’ll have for a week. Q is for the Quiet in my isolated little apartment while I hunger for the sound of the spontaneous laughter of friends and strangers. Q is for quickly quoting Quintilian on Quintus’ quibbles. Or just quaffing Quarantinis to Quench one’s unfulfilled social thirst.
R is for “Read the instructions before you email me.” Or Rabbit-holes which seem more and more attractive as our usual distractions are retracted.
S is for Sleep, omg kids just please let me Sleep. Also for Snacking, all day every day, from boredom or stress. And the Serpens keeping me grounded and making me Smile in this mess.
T is for Teaching Tacitus one moment and Third-grade math the next. Plus Thucydides, who obviously explains everything about the plague, or why would there be so many identikit articles about him at the moment? And Twitter, where we can go to complain.
U is for the Unions who are trying to protect our rights in the midst of this mess. And the Unquiet in my heart when I try to capture the sparks of dialogue, sharing of ideas, and camaraderie that characterize my sense of meaning and belonging on campus; absent as we stutter and freeze adrift through endless videoconferences with Unseen colleagues.
V is for Video recording, editing, and captioning. The bulk of my Sisyphean daily “to do” task.
W is for all the Writing that I haven’t found any extra time to do, and the Whiskey that now just sits out on my kitchen counter.
X is for Xylosphongium, because toilet paper is even harder to find in stores than kimchi. X is for Xenophon, in that I’m so deep into this katabasis, I’m considering reading him. X is for the Xenophobia Asians are facing all over the globe. But also Xenia: a wave from the far side of the world, streaming through the digital aether, is the ‘guest-friendship’ that endures.
Y for Yeast, which describes both my daily pastime (feeding the sourdough) and the only interaction I can still have with a crowd of (microscopic but dear-to-me) friends.
Z is for Zoomed out, because we all are. (See also Zoloft, above.)
Nandini Pandey will see you at #ClassicsTwitterMovieNight!
