March 8, 2021

half the sky

Manila, 8 March—Happy International Women’s Day! It seems a bit rote, to start off with this greeting, but it must be noted that throughout this pandemic, the world has been held together by women—they are doctors and nurses and healthcare workers at the frontlines; they are teachers, managers, mothers looking after the welfare of their wards. They are leaders in areas where the pandemic response has been excellent1. Hereabouts, they show up when the men don’t2.

In commemoration, I’d like to share this infographic C and I did for IWD 2019: Women in Power in the Philippines, which takes a historical view on women in elective office, particularly in the House of Representatives, Senate, Vice Presidency and Presidency + some other women-centric stats. I think it’s pretty timeless, and would probably deserve an update already. Maybe one of these days.

A writer I follow on Substack, Helena Fitzgerald3 just finished watching Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy for the first time, and is writing beautifully about it. But what’s arresting about her latest installment is her sentiment about March:

Through some grand injustice, it is March again. Everyone is already talking about lockdown anniversaries, but in terms of the calendar, most of us are actually not quite there yet. We’re in the just-barely-before, something arguably far more painful. This week is the anniversary not of lockdown but of the thing that preceded it; these are the anniversaries of the last good day. 

It’s almost certainly true that my last good day was not as nice as I remember it being. It was a good day, sure, and most of the things I remember happening probably happened, but it was not the outsize perfect day I now imagine it to be. It’s just that it was my last day before all the current ones, before the never-ending March in which we are still living. It is the last time I can remember being happy in the sloppy, luxe, careless way that I now associate with a permanently shuttered part of my life. Whatever the “when this is all over” that we all talk to each other about actually turns out to be, it will not be recognizable. The early part of last March happened in a language that none of us will ever speak again.

I can’t remember much of what I was doing immediately preceding the lockdown last year—judging by the photos in my phone I was covering a lot of work stuff, feeding strays near our building, selling stickers, and playing Baxia on Mobile Legends (lmao). When the lockdown loomed, we proceeded to make temporary arrangements to work from home, thinking—how optimistic, looking back—that we’d be seeing each other again in two weeks. Well, suffice it to say, we’ve underestimated just how badly the government wanted to bungle their entire COVID-19 response4.

Do I wish I did something grander in the run-up to the start of the apocalypse? Sometimes. But I have no problems living an ordinary life—I just wish I remembered most of how ordinary it was. I miss most of all being in somewhat regular motion: We got out of the house and walked to work. We dined out after exhausting work days and sometimes stayed out late to have coffee afterwards. Then we fed the cats we met on our way home. The ordinary days had their own rhythm and grace; it was actually a very pleasant experience.

It’s unsettling, talking about all of that in the past tense; as if none of it is ever coming back. Maybe Helena is right; maybe it’s all an old language we’ll never speak again. Maybe at this very moment, we’re teaching ourselves all these new tongues. I don’t know. Sometimes, when we go out, we no longer see cats; the one we used to feed got adopted5 in the middle of the pandemic, which is nice. I hope that’s what happened to the others, too.

So yeah, the year has been a ride; most things are the same, yet are not. We’ve since moved in anticipation of a semi-permanent hybrid work situation that entails a home office setup. If you told me in 2019 I’d be spending quite a bit for a sturdy work chair, I’d have laughed in your face. No one is laughing now, and this chair is currently the best thing I’ve done for my back.

In relation to this hybrid work situation—there’s a lot of talk about going out of the metro for good. If you could work anywhere, why live in the city? Many colleagues and friends are asking this very question. Some of them have pushed through and moved out, cutting their rental expenses by at least half.

I’m a fan of the countryside and the quiet, but I’ve been living in this city for close to a decade and a half, and I’m not quite ready yet to give it up. I’m a city girl. For all their faults, I love cities and their building-spattered skylines. If there’s anything this pandemic has revealed, it’s my relationship with risk, and I’m as risk-averse as they come. I don’t think moving from being a city girl to being an outside of city-girl is in the cards at the moment.

But then again—none of this was in anybody’s cards in any moment, so who knows, right?

Lots of good memes lately, so it’s kind of hard to choose—but if I had to, I’d go for this pug, who takes the cake for encapsulating That Pandemic Feeling, One Year Hence:

Thank you for making it this far. Hope you have a great week ahead!

Xo,

K