In a slightly different reality, I woke up early last Sunday to catch a flight to Tallinn—3.5 hours that put an arbitrary wrap on 3.5 months in Georgia more or less as planned. By the afternoon, we’re back in Europe, or at least the flat northeastern corner of it (as opposed to its perplexing ancient southeastern flank), eating fancy French cheese and thinking about where to go next, and how: a cheap flight to Vienna; a boat to Stockholm; maybe a bus to St. Petersburg, even the train across Russia. How can we put ourselves in the tightest space with the most people for the longest amount of time, I wonder.
Of course, our flight was canceled a while ago and here we are, a tiny bit marooned on the Black Sea instead of home on the Baltic one. Still, in a lot of ways, Batumi is a quarantiner's dream. There's nothing going on here this early in the year and very few people seem to actually live in my neighborhood, a small grid of cobbled streets and pretty, crumbling pastel buildings. An old Armenian church across the street rings its bells at thought-provoking times like 8:42 in the morning and 1:37 in the afternoon.
I'm five minutes from the sea and three from a decent pharmacy. Thanks to technology, I can now get McDonald's delivered without any face-to-face interaction or the shame that comes from having a Big N' Tasty fetched for me. And I'm lucky: I've been self-isolating for most of my adult life. So that part is easy, and I'm definitely not losing my mind.
Actually, aside from the fact that I can't leave, these strange days are looking strangely similar to all my other days. I drink pour-over coffee, same as before. I go for walks, same as before. I wash my hands every half hour, same as before. I practice my ventriloquism with Leland Palmer (Leland's a hand puppet Katya made from scraps of linen and a hotel sewing kit), same as before.
Routine is important, we keep saying (saying it is part of the routine), otherwise you can really go crazy. Then again, we wonder aloud, if we're both stuck inside with each other for a while, who's gonna notice if one of us starts to lose it?
Easy, I say, pointing to the heap of googly eyes and orange yarn: Leland.