What Isolation Looks Like: The View of a World Within a Snow Globe- Yuna Chae
As life progresses on through days of quarantine, we are met with an unfamiliar phenomenon. That is, the absence of an ever bustling community of social humans. Never before has the world seemed like such a desolate ghost-town, similar to ones from old cartoons where an abandoned town is swept with a dusty breeze accompanied by the soft whispers of tumbleweeds. However, we are in no desert, and these are not ghost-towns. With built up tension from the fear of what is to come, as well as the frustration of being restricted, people keep themselves locked within their homes like flies caught between a glass door and the mesh netting, not knowing what to do with themselves.
You look outside your window and I'm sure you've noticed the same. Whether you live in a quiet suburban town or a bustling metropolitan I'm sure it has come to your attention that the noise has gotten quieter. As if looking for Waldo, it is hard to find those same people that hustled and bustled near you, and the sudden lack of sound is unnoticeably disturbing. Where is the neighbor who would walk her dogs early in the morning? Where are the familiar honking of cars and unnecessary bangs of construction that woke you up cranky in the morning? It's not just the noise; where are the smells of mouth-watering BBQs and of chlorine and sunblock that is normal during these summer months? It is as if, you occupy a world with only you, as if the rest of the world, unbeknownst to you, had disappeared.
The truth of the matter is not that they disappeared, but that in a pandemic where human to human contact is the main method of spread of disease, people can't help but be cautious. So you look out the window, and you see streets lined with cars, but no sight of their owners. You look at the world outside simply from pictures of those who had stepped outside or from the limited view you get from your window.
Quarantine to me always struck as one of the "toxic do not enter" signs in zombie movies. Cutting off a group of infected people for the safety of others unaffected. But the quarantine we are seeing today is cutting every individual person off from one another as a method of protecting everyone, a twist on the word I had never considered. It has become more of a lifestyle now, and I have to say that I miss people. This new view is a lonely one, and one that I could have never imagined even a couple months ago. As if sitting within your own snow globe, the outside world seems foreign, and without humans walking around and filling the space you wonder what it was even like to meet a person face to face. But the experience is a shared one, and the view is nearly the same for all, whether you are in Los Angeles or China, so are you really alone?
Below is a collection of photos from the view outside a window, everyone's own snowglobe:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1C9ndp_tojHoYK5rxZJ3qrGbteYqeFm0Z2-fI4Y9-N58/edit?usp=sharing
You look outside your window and I'm sure you've noticed the same. Whether you live in a quiet suburban town or a bustling metropolitan I'm sure it has come to your attention that the noise has gotten quieter. As if looking for Waldo, it is hard to find those same people that hustled and bustled near you, and the sudden lack of sound is unnoticeably disturbing. Where is the neighbor who would walk her dogs early in the morning? Where are the familiar honking of cars and unnecessary bangs of construction that woke you up cranky in the morning? It's not just the noise; where are the smells of mouth-watering BBQs and of chlorine and sunblock that is normal during these summer months? It is as if, you occupy a world with only you, as if the rest of the world, unbeknownst to you, had disappeared.
The truth of the matter is not that they disappeared, but that in a pandemic where human to human contact is the main method of spread of disease, people can't help but be cautious. So you look out the window, and you see streets lined with cars, but no sight of their owners. You look at the world outside simply from pictures of those who had stepped outside or from the limited view you get from your window.
Quarantine to me always struck as one of the "toxic do not enter" signs in zombie movies. Cutting off a group of infected people for the safety of others unaffected. But the quarantine we are seeing today is cutting every individual person off from one another as a method of protecting everyone, a twist on the word I had never considered. It has become more of a lifestyle now, and I have to say that I miss people. This new view is a lonely one, and one that I could have never imagined even a couple months ago. As if sitting within your own snow globe, the outside world seems foreign, and without humans walking around and filling the space you wonder what it was even like to meet a person face to face. But the experience is a shared one, and the view is nearly the same for all, whether you are in Los Angeles or China, so are you really alone?
Below is a collection of photos from the view outside a window, everyone's own snowglobe:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1C9ndp_tojHoYK5rxZJ3qrGbteYqeFm0Z2-fI4Y9-N58/edit?usp=sharing
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