This newly created themed series titled “Time Capsule Letters” is a special series created to highlight submissions for the Community-Driven Archives (CDA) team and community members regarding their lives during COVID-19 and the hopes for our lives after COVID-19. We hope you enjoy this series and will contribute your own time capsule letters to yourself or others regarding life during COVID-19. Many thanks to Myra Khan, a student worker in CDA who inspired this series.
Myra, is currently a sophomore at Arizona State University (ASU) studying Sustainability with minors in Political Science and Transborder Studies. Please enjoy Myra’s time capsule letter below. And please contact me, Jessica Salow, with feedback or submissions for this series at Jessica.Salow@asu.edu, as I would love to hear from you your time capsule letter and in general your thoughts regarding the work we here at ASU are doing in community archiving around Arizona. See you next week!
Time Capsule letter - Hannibal Courier Post
Dear my post-pandemic self:
Hello! I hope you have been doing well. It seems like I’ve always started out my emails like that but these days I mean it more than ever. How are you doing? How is life? How long since the pandemic has it been? Is life back to “normal?” What is normal like? Is Zoom still the app of the day or has it faded out of use again, either from people getting fed up or from lack of usefulness? Have you been going to every restaurant in the city again like you promised?
As I write this, I’m trying to motivate myself to work through my final projects for my classes. During the beginning of the year, as you probably remember, the semester was a breeze, but that all changed after quarantine. It hasn’t been until recently that I’ve thought about how much I need not just to see my friends but just to see and hear people in general, no matter who they are. I miss the crowds at the farmer’s markets, the students in the library, even the noise through the vents in my apartment. These days, even just calling my friends and sitting in silence while hearing the occasional absent chuckle or cough from the other end is enough if we’ve run out of ways to joke about our messy sleep schedules or our innovative “meals.”
Quarantine is a lot of time with myself, for better or for worse. I’ve spent a lot of time painting, reading, cooking, doing the kinds of things I usually wouldn’t have the time or creative energy for. On the other hand, I’ve also done a lot of napping, Netflix binging, and refreshing my Twitter feed- also things I normally wouldn’t do, though for different reasons. It’s definitely a unique time for all of us. I know I’ve gotten sick of reading the identical tweets and think pieces saying that exact thing and that if I hear the word “unprecedented” one more time I might just delete all of my social media. But it does beg the question, what else are we supposed to do right now? It seems like trying to do anything “productive” is just burying our heads in the sand. Business as usual just isn’t, no matter how much some people want to treat it as such.
In any case, I hope you remember the boredom, the introspection, the relaxation, the stress, the fear, and the curiosity of this time though most of all, I hope you remember the community of this time. I hope that the world remembers the community of this time, how the pandemic did bring out the worst in some people but it also very much did bring out the best in others. Even once it’s (hopefully) over, I hope we remember the importance of compassion and empathy and I hope we remember the pain experienced by so many and are able to learn from it and make a better society. I hope we remember what “unavoidable” barriers we proved we could live without and that we don’t return to the “normal” of yesterday and that instead we adapt to a new equilibrium, a better one.
Give your friends a hug for me, will you?
Lots of love,
Myra
4/29/2020