Running from Coronavirus (Part 7)

Teaching sustained me through the Spring. Sustained in the sense that though both my living situation was fluid and the wider world was / still is struggling, the constant rigor of needing to maintain a schedule kept chaos from coloring the every day. Two courses, sixteen students in total, papers, class meetings, conferences, assignments, and faculty council duties meant I didn't have a lot of time to reflect on the present and imagine the future beyond the semester. To make it through the end of the semester I needed control of my living space and a stable internet connection, which was achieved relatively easily. Meanwhile, the bulk of my students were still in mainland China on lock down. I could see their faces in whatever space they had managed to carve out at their parent's house: offices, kitchen tables, and childhood bedrooms. Our Zoom session met twice a week, either early in the morning or later at night, a twelve hour time difference between Shanghai and Eastern Standard time zones. For most of my students, our synchronous sessions were the bulk of the interactive face time they were receiving, as many of their courses ran asynchronously or as a narrated PPT.

Snow man, Indiana

Our first meeting over Zoom was when I was still in Australia and I felt guilty being in a kind of paradise, gallivanting on the beach while they were locked in their homes. In Indiana, still winter, I didn't feel as guilty.

Unbelievably, everything seemed to be as it was. Australia was all new to me but Indiana, a place where I lived for five years, I could certifiably say was operating as usual. After two days in a hotel and and five days in an Airbnb, my girlfriend (Ed. note: Tyler's girlfriend is finishing up her PhD in Indiana which is why he returned to Indiana) and I found a cheap but acceptable sublet in a big housing complex near campus that was mostly populated by students. I got a temporary gym membership to go swimming and play basketball. I ate at familiar restaurants (for a week) and worked at the public library. For three weeks things seemed normal. When I got into longer conversations with people around town, a clerk at the book store, an old basketball acquaintance, a friend of friend, I'd say at some point after the subject of China and the virus was broached, "It's coming here too. It's just a matter of time." But this sentiment didn't seem to land. A few of my friends had been stock piling supplies and preparing, but most folks were not. Being in China and traveling had trained me to be careful/paranoid: to constantly wash my hands, not to touch metal door handles, to hold my breath in elevators, to wear gloves when I grocery shopped, not get too close to strangers, and wear a mask.

By the beginning of March the virus started to overtly manifest in the States and the government started to pay more attention and the rest that story flits between disaster. The primary thing that has made this experience bearable has been being with Jo and Dave in Australia, being with my students online, and being with my girlfriend in Indiana. For me, what was true in China is still true in Indiana: I'm not afraid of the virus as much as I'm afraid of getting stuck alone, be it in an empty apartment for months on end, in the hospital, or in some place where I don't know anyone. Running from the coronavirus has been more about running from the prospect of loneliness than it has been about health. Which is not a fear that, at least in my life, is entirely limited to global pandemic health events. At any rate, I'm winding down here in terms of what I wanted to say, and so I'll end the recall of events.