August 5, 2020: Letters
Little Me by Lucia Roman Harter
A Letter from the Editors
August 5, 2020
Dear Reader,
The idea for this zine came about just as social distancing started. Two days after, to be exact. A small group of us had met at a picnic table outside to choose pieces for the physical Blue Rider, and with the pandemic looming, we stretched the afternoon out as long as we could, talking as much as choosing, just to hang out. Somewhere around the two hour mark, the zine came up. We intended it as a short-term project, something to stay engaged with the arts and with each other.
This issue is our fifth publication in this format. We never expected it, or social distancing measures, to last so long. And because it also happens to be the end of summer and the beginning of a new school year, we thought we’d use this issue to share three letters we received back in April as responses to one of our 15-minute prompts. It’s a chance to reflect on the not-so-distant past, and see what still holds true from what we wrote back then, and what has changed. A lot has. A lot hasn’t.
As school restarts, we’ll be passing Blue Rider on to Phebian Gray, Ashley Danzig, Jack Geryol, Jetta Strayhorn, Sophia Huynh, and Laney Gonzalez-Rico, with Phebian taking the lead on COVID nine zine. We can’t wait to see what they will do with it. So as this magazine continues to evolve, we’re also using this issue, our last issue, as our chance to step out from behind the screen and share this letter to you. We want to say thank you for joining us in this virtual community. It’s meant a lot to us to have you on this journey. We hope it’s meant something to you too.
Read on,
Anna, Alondra, Emma, Olivia, and Jordan
COVID nine zine Editors, 2020
The idea for this zine came about just as social distancing started. Two days after, to be exact. A small group of us had met at a picnic table outside to choose pieces for the physical Blue Rider, and with the pandemic looming, we stretched the afternoon out as long as we could, talking as much as choosing, just to hang out. Somewhere around the two hour mark, the zine came up. We intended it as a short-term project, something to stay engaged with the arts and with each other.
This issue is our fifth publication in this format. We never expected it, or social distancing measures, to last so long. And because it also happens to be the end of summer and the beginning of a new school year, we thought we’d use this issue to share three letters we received back in April as responses to one of our 15-minute prompts. It’s a chance to reflect on the not-so-distant past, and see what still holds true from what we wrote back then, and what has changed. A lot has. A lot hasn’t.
As school restarts, we’ll be passing Blue Rider on to Phebian Gray, Ashley Danzig, Jack Geryol, Jetta Strayhorn, Sophia Huynh, and Laney Gonzalez-Rico, with Phebian taking the lead on COVID nine zine. We can’t wait to see what they will do with it. So as this magazine continues to evolve, we’re also using this issue, our last issue, as our chance to step out from behind the screen and share this letter to you. We want to say thank you for joining us in this virtual community. It’s meant a lot to us to have you on this journey. We hope it’s meant something to you too.
Read on,
Anna, Alondra, Emma, Olivia, and Jordan
COVID nine zine Editors, 2020
April 28, 2020
Dear Children,
I’m writing this letter to you because one day you will find it interesting to know about the strange time that I am living in now.
I’m living in a time where there is a pandemic called the Coronavirus. This is a virus that has killed thousands of people all around the world. It’s so easy to catch and you have to stay six feet away from people who aren’t in your immediate family.
It was Friday, the 13th, and a lot of things went wrong that day. It was a normal day at school, and my team was in the Reading Bowl final. We knew all the answers but every time we tried to press the buzzer, the other teams got it. It felt unlucky. In literature class, we were reading “The Lottery,” which is a freaky story. When I went to pick up my PiBites, they didn’t have mine. Everything was going wrong. At 1:30, the teachers asked us to clean out our lockers, and so we knew we were going to be out of school for more than just one day. It felt like the last day of school, but it wasn’t like the last day because we didn’t even get to say goodbye to our friends. Later that day, my friend and I were taking a walk and a black cat followed us over a creek and then when we came back it followed us all the way home and stayed there until we had to bring it back to the end of the street. It was such a strange day, both sunny and cloudy, but since then things have gotten more strange.
Six weeks later…
Now my school life is so much different from how it used to be. Every day I wake up and do the work that is assigned for that day. We have something called zooms that I had never heard of before. Now it is something I do in my everyday life. Zoom is a video conferencing app. On the app, you can see everyone's face. It's so much different than real life because you can't really make eye contact with anyone. This is what I did before the coronavirus. I woke up early in the morning, got dressed and left the house by 7:45 to be able to get to school by 8:00. In the mornings, I got to hang out with my friends and talk before our first class. I would talk about the homework or what we did the night before. You got to be with other people besides your family. Now when I think about seeing people it feels like it is only in my dreams. I took it for granted and I didn't realize how lucky I was to be able to see my teachers and friends every day.
I never could have imagined that there would be a pandemic that would invade my 8th grade year. Some questions that I would ask my future self or people that are no longer in this pandemic, did they ever find a vaccine? If so, what is it? I want to ask you if they found a cure to cancer. Have you ever heard of a zoom class? Have you heard of an iPhone?
Still to this day I wonder what it would have been like if the corona virus wasn’t a thing. I hope you find this letter and someday remember my words. I hope that you never have to live through this awful time.
Love,
Lilly Margolis
I’m writing this letter to you because one day you will find it interesting to know about the strange time that I am living in now.
I’m living in a time where there is a pandemic called the Coronavirus. This is a virus that has killed thousands of people all around the world. It’s so easy to catch and you have to stay six feet away from people who aren’t in your immediate family.
It was Friday, the 13th, and a lot of things went wrong that day. It was a normal day at school, and my team was in the Reading Bowl final. We knew all the answers but every time we tried to press the buzzer, the other teams got it. It felt unlucky. In literature class, we were reading “The Lottery,” which is a freaky story. When I went to pick up my PiBites, they didn’t have mine. Everything was going wrong. At 1:30, the teachers asked us to clean out our lockers, and so we knew we were going to be out of school for more than just one day. It felt like the last day of school, but it wasn’t like the last day because we didn’t even get to say goodbye to our friends. Later that day, my friend and I were taking a walk and a black cat followed us over a creek and then when we came back it followed us all the way home and stayed there until we had to bring it back to the end of the street. It was such a strange day, both sunny and cloudy, but since then things have gotten more strange.
Six weeks later…
Now my school life is so much different from how it used to be. Every day I wake up and do the work that is assigned for that day. We have something called zooms that I had never heard of before. Now it is something I do in my everyday life. Zoom is a video conferencing app. On the app, you can see everyone's face. It's so much different than real life because you can't really make eye contact with anyone. This is what I did before the coronavirus. I woke up early in the morning, got dressed and left the house by 7:45 to be able to get to school by 8:00. In the mornings, I got to hang out with my friends and talk before our first class. I would talk about the homework or what we did the night before. You got to be with other people besides your family. Now when I think about seeing people it feels like it is only in my dreams. I took it for granted and I didn't realize how lucky I was to be able to see my teachers and friends every day.
I never could have imagined that there would be a pandemic that would invade my 8th grade year. Some questions that I would ask my future self or people that are no longer in this pandemic, did they ever find a vaccine? If so, what is it? I want to ask you if they found a cure to cancer. Have you ever heard of a zoom class? Have you heard of an iPhone?
Still to this day I wonder what it would have been like if the corona virus wasn’t a thing. I hope you find this letter and someday remember my words. I hope that you never have to live through this awful time.
Love,
Lilly Margolis
April 28, 2020
Everlasting Isolation
To whoever this may concern,
The year is 2020, and we are in the middle of the outbreak of the new virus, Covid-19. I hope to provide some insight into the day to day operations of our new lives. The primary change being that social events and obligations in the outside world have been postponed or cancelled. We are all to stay away from each other in order to keep everyone safe and stop the spread of the virus.
Currently, my house has never felt so uncomfortable, and the word home seems all too familiar to me. For weeks, we’ve been locked inside our “homes”, and normal socialization has
never seemed so far away, and it seems to only grow further with each day. I can only hope we
can find a way out of this pandemic. I can’t imagine staying in my house for any longer.
The fear is growing with each day, and you can see it all around you. Businesses are beginning to close one by one, and for sale signs never fail to appear on each block. Every neighborhood is a ghost town with no signs of life. The only exception is the occasional pedestrian trying to get away from their home. Those rare few spread across streets like pieces of a puzzle. Occasionally, someone will yell out to you from across the street. Maybe they are a friend, classmate, or coworker. The natural urge is to run over and say hello, but at this time, you can’t. People tiptoe around each other, carefully measuring six feet inside their head. A game of distancing where you are the main player. Having to navigate through each level just so you can go for a walk or run.
People are becoming more and more desperate to protect themselves and the impact is clear. Toilet paper which was once in abundance, is now scarce. The shortage of masks only grows and gloves cover the hands of strangers. Protecting yourself and maintaining normality is an impossible mission. While weeks blur together and the months are beginning to pass we continue to be trapped in an asylum. Every day is the same and nothing ever changes. We slowly have begun to sink into a pattern in order to feel some sort of control over our own lives.
With no end in sight, and the lack of in person communication, we are forced to adjust. Zoom, FaceTime, Skype. The use of the internet is only growing as more and more people use video calling to simulate real interaction. But like anything, a simulation is never as good as the real thing. Our lives are slowly turning more and more fake. The replication of normality grows intensely as we become more desperate. The number one priority is to go on like normal and it’s unobtainable. The unfortunate reality is that we are all living in a replacement world.
Best,
Andrew P. Reveno
To whoever this may concern,
The year is 2020, and we are in the middle of the outbreak of the new virus, Covid-19. I hope to provide some insight into the day to day operations of our new lives. The primary change being that social events and obligations in the outside world have been postponed or cancelled. We are all to stay away from each other in order to keep everyone safe and stop the spread of the virus.
Currently, my house has never felt so uncomfortable, and the word home seems all too familiar to me. For weeks, we’ve been locked inside our “homes”, and normal socialization has
never seemed so far away, and it seems to only grow further with each day. I can only hope we
can find a way out of this pandemic. I can’t imagine staying in my house for any longer.
The fear is growing with each day, and you can see it all around you. Businesses are beginning to close one by one, and for sale signs never fail to appear on each block. Every neighborhood is a ghost town with no signs of life. The only exception is the occasional pedestrian trying to get away from their home. Those rare few spread across streets like pieces of a puzzle. Occasionally, someone will yell out to you from across the street. Maybe they are a friend, classmate, or coworker. The natural urge is to run over and say hello, but at this time, you can’t. People tiptoe around each other, carefully measuring six feet inside their head. A game of distancing where you are the main player. Having to navigate through each level just so you can go for a walk or run.
People are becoming more and more desperate to protect themselves and the impact is clear. Toilet paper which was once in abundance, is now scarce. The shortage of masks only grows and gloves cover the hands of strangers. Protecting yourself and maintaining normality is an impossible mission. While weeks blur together and the months are beginning to pass we continue to be trapped in an asylum. Every day is the same and nothing ever changes. We slowly have begun to sink into a pattern in order to feel some sort of control over our own lives.
With no end in sight, and the lack of in person communication, we are forced to adjust. Zoom, FaceTime, Skype. The use of the internet is only growing as more and more people use video calling to simulate real interaction. But like anything, a simulation is never as good as the real thing. Our lives are slowly turning more and more fake. The replication of normality grows intensely as we become more desperate. The number one priority is to go on like normal and it’s unobtainable. The unfortunate reality is that we are all living in a replacement world.
Best,
Andrew P. Reveno
April 5, 2020
Dear Alex,
How are you in Chicago? In the news today I only see New York, New York, and New York, where exhausted nurses and exhausted doctors and failing systems can’t cope with much more as everyone catches the coronavirus and I can’t imagine Chicago is that far behind because it’s also a big city, the Big Apple of the Midwest so maybe it’s more like the Big Corn or something or maybe I’ll just go with Carl Sandburg and the Hog Butcher for the World but I digress.
Perhaps you don’t know. You are staying home at least. This I know from your mom who is talking to my mom over text like everything else these days it’s online little faces in little boxes full of ticky tackys none of it seems very real sometimes it’s as if it has all vanished except for this little glowing box and me in a bigger box with windows and sunlight and starlight and clouds sometimes, another little screen, or maybe a big screen, like the one in your basement where we played Zelda: Breath of the Wild over winter break but that wasn’t very real either.
But what do I know about what is real now? Indoors and outdoors and I know you have clouds, I am sorry it is still so cold outside for you, that on top of all else you must deal with the gray winter and no school no don’t torture your sister too badly even if you’re bored I saw you on that last video call pulling her cheeks you are older, after all, but I am older than you and who am I to say anything against screaming.
I understand the length of days now. The horror of time passing when I don’t know how to be useful and the hours run into hours run into hours until I finally sleep again and wake to more hours and little boxes full of people full of ticky tackys and sometimes it’s not enough to just be to just be healthy, safe, and free how dare I ask for sanity too when so many have so little?
We are lucky. You, too. I was thinking of giving blood today just to do something do anything in the face of little tiny specks of disease but I live with Nainai as you live with your Nainai and Yeye who is also our Waipo and Waigong I was thinking of giving blood today and went so far as to look it up, see what action means today click click click and my fingers get exercise I hope you grow up to live in a world of hands and palms.
I suppose that’s my job, my generation’s job to make it so in the next ten years. But now I’m remembering it’s more like eight or even seven because you’re in fifth grade already and getting bigger and maybe you already know what it feels like when it’s hard to act and it’s hard to sit at home and sometimes the world no longer fits into the little boxes full of ticky tackys you want it to fit in. I’m sorry.
Then again, Butcher is the right word for it. Butcher and I digress but butcher the knife that carves swathes across America butcher the nations butchered responses botched reactions Butcher-in-chief the knife the knife the knife that cuts swathes across America and the world and scythes down the doctors, the helpers, the poor, the hungry, those that managed until recently and maybe then it will finally come for the rich eat the rich they say but we’ve already eaten everyone else who’s left to do the eating. Cannibalism is a word too, you know, and easier to explain than sex too that time you asked me when I said something and then I stuttered but I think you probably already know cannibalism.
So who knows what will happen tomorrow. My father, your favorite people, he says he wishes life were like cutting papaya, just a slick slice through the flesh and the chink of knife against porcelain so easy, so smooth, and perhaps this is what that’s like and perhaps we are lucky to have papaya-smooth lives but I don’t know if that can be true in the presence of so much fear.
Fear for you. Fear for grandma and grandma and grandpa and thank god we don’t have to fear for the dead too they’ve bitten the bullet already but I try not to don’t think about it too much it’s all outside our little boxes and maybe in the box somewhere there’s still room for love. Courage is a word too, and it comes from coeur or heart in French I bet you take Spanish it’s far more useful but it’s lovely to do something just for the beauty of it.
Coeur. Courage, Alex, courage that I do not have, that I don’t think anyone truly has but enough to push the humming live wires of what if what if what if away and I hope Zelda is enough to keep the dark at bay for now but when that fails I will still listen for your laughter over Facetime even if it’s all that is left. But I digress how are you how are you how are you?
Good bad up down sideways green blue red electric?
So many days to feel through.
Love,
Anna
How are you in Chicago? In the news today I only see New York, New York, and New York, where exhausted nurses and exhausted doctors and failing systems can’t cope with much more as everyone catches the coronavirus and I can’t imagine Chicago is that far behind because it’s also a big city, the Big Apple of the Midwest so maybe it’s more like the Big Corn or something or maybe I’ll just go with Carl Sandburg and the Hog Butcher for the World but I digress.
Perhaps you don’t know. You are staying home at least. This I know from your mom who is talking to my mom over text like everything else these days it’s online little faces in little boxes full of ticky tackys none of it seems very real sometimes it’s as if it has all vanished except for this little glowing box and me in a bigger box with windows and sunlight and starlight and clouds sometimes, another little screen, or maybe a big screen, like the one in your basement where we played Zelda: Breath of the Wild over winter break but that wasn’t very real either.
But what do I know about what is real now? Indoors and outdoors and I know you have clouds, I am sorry it is still so cold outside for you, that on top of all else you must deal with the gray winter and no school no don’t torture your sister too badly even if you’re bored I saw you on that last video call pulling her cheeks you are older, after all, but I am older than you and who am I to say anything against screaming.
I understand the length of days now. The horror of time passing when I don’t know how to be useful and the hours run into hours run into hours until I finally sleep again and wake to more hours and little boxes full of people full of ticky tackys and sometimes it’s not enough to just be to just be healthy, safe, and free how dare I ask for sanity too when so many have so little?
We are lucky. You, too. I was thinking of giving blood today just to do something do anything in the face of little tiny specks of disease but I live with Nainai as you live with your Nainai and Yeye who is also our Waipo and Waigong I was thinking of giving blood today and went so far as to look it up, see what action means today click click click and my fingers get exercise I hope you grow up to live in a world of hands and palms.
I suppose that’s my job, my generation’s job to make it so in the next ten years. But now I’m remembering it’s more like eight or even seven because you’re in fifth grade already and getting bigger and maybe you already know what it feels like when it’s hard to act and it’s hard to sit at home and sometimes the world no longer fits into the little boxes full of ticky tackys you want it to fit in. I’m sorry.
Then again, Butcher is the right word for it. Butcher and I digress but butcher the knife that carves swathes across America butcher the nations butchered responses botched reactions Butcher-in-chief the knife the knife the knife that cuts swathes across America and the world and scythes down the doctors, the helpers, the poor, the hungry, those that managed until recently and maybe then it will finally come for the rich eat the rich they say but we’ve already eaten everyone else who’s left to do the eating. Cannibalism is a word too, you know, and easier to explain than sex too that time you asked me when I said something and then I stuttered but I think you probably already know cannibalism.
So who knows what will happen tomorrow. My father, your favorite people, he says he wishes life were like cutting papaya, just a slick slice through the flesh and the chink of knife against porcelain so easy, so smooth, and perhaps this is what that’s like and perhaps we are lucky to have papaya-smooth lives but I don’t know if that can be true in the presence of so much fear.
Fear for you. Fear for grandma and grandma and grandpa and thank god we don’t have to fear for the dead too they’ve bitten the bullet already but I try not to don’t think about it too much it’s all outside our little boxes and maybe in the box somewhere there’s still room for love. Courage is a word too, and it comes from coeur or heart in French I bet you take Spanish it’s far more useful but it’s lovely to do something just for the beauty of it.
Coeur. Courage, Alex, courage that I do not have, that I don’t think anyone truly has but enough to push the humming live wires of what if what if what if away and I hope Zelda is enough to keep the dark at bay for now but when that fails I will still listen for your laughter over Facetime even if it’s all that is left. But I digress how are you how are you how are you?
Good bad up down sideways green blue red electric?
So many days to feel through.
Love,
Anna