Write an Arbitrary List and Pretend

Because I have been self-quarantining for a month due to illness, I thought others might be able to benefit from what I have learned. Below, I have compiled a list of activities I can recommend:

• The Met Opera has been offering free viewings. Sing along even if you don’t know the words or the tune. Tape ribbons to your head. You’re a main character, now.
• Make sage tea.
• Sleep upright on the couch.
• Talk to a doctor over the phone with your one good ear. You haven’t slept in several days. You can’t breathe when your body tips. He will prescribe something, maybe?
• Make constant comment tea.
• Read War and Peace, you can get a free digital copy. Even if you only read only about 15 pages a day, you’ll be done by the end of this thing; then, you’ll be able to tell people you’ve read War and Peace.
• Download the Seven-Minute workout app. Get off your butt to stretch, even for seven minutes. If you’re not flexible or don’t have room for crunches, just wave your arms in circles, instead. Make up new stretches. Lift your knee onto a chair. Become entangled with the chair.
• Follow your cat. Be his shadow. Meow at him insistently.
• Accidentally buy a whole flat of pudding from Amazon. This is surprisingly inexpensive. Even if you eat one pudding per day, there’ll still be a ton of pudding.
• Watch a penguin stare at fish on the internet.
• Follow your spouse. Be his shadow. Meow at him insistently during his morning stand-up at work.
• Sit under the same blanket for seven days. Stop showering. Eat seven puddings in one day. Make green tea. Still feel that rough sugary beast of pudding as it slouches through your body.
• Watch an entire television series you haven’t seen in years, from start to finish. (Notice how problematic. How not nuanced.)
• Wonder if your savings / credit will get you through this period of unemployment.
• Climb in the shower and pretend you are any woman from a lifetime special. Cry loudly under the faucet. Let the water get hotter and hotter. Ignore it. It’s killing the virus.
• Talk to another doctor. He sounds tired. He will tell you to use Flonase. Thank him for his services.
• Make lavender tea.
• Draw on your face with that sparkle make-up you never use in public. Make thick lines. Twist your long bangs in knots. Trick computers. You are not you.
• Carry a didgeridoo (or rain stick) through the house. Pretend to row on a mighty river. Carpet stains are rocks.
• Stare at Twitter in horror.
• Make ginger tea.
• Eat an orange to avoid scurvy. Wonder if vitamin c gummies will help you avoid scurvy. Think about googling scurvy. Stare at the television instead.
• If you have a Switch, play the Untitled Goose Game with the sound turned up. Honk over and over.
• Try to record yourself reading a poem for #InternationalPoetryCircle. The cat will break down the door. Delete recording of you calling your cat a perfect tiny baby monster.
• Follow your cat, again. Knock him on his side like a tiny cow. Fall on floor. Place head on cat. He will bite your face. Lean in.
• Cough into cooling ramen.
• Stare at your guitar.
• Make Irish Breakfast tea.
• Wiggle your toes.
• Go for one walk outside.
• Wash your hands to Violent Femmes’ “Kiss Off”.
• During your coughing fit, buy hiking boots that are on sale, online. Convince yourself that you will use the boots when you are healthy again.
• Rearrange the magnet poetry on the fridge.
• Rearrange the cabinet in the bathroom.
• Rearrange the pots and pans.
• Make a list of canned items in the cabinet.
• Water the bamboo that’s dying next to your kitchen sink.
• Make elderberry tea.
• Email yourself at another email address. Wait for the email to appear.
• Check your junk email. Find a poetry acceptance.
• Read all the Physics books in your house. Become obsessed with time travel.
• Read all of the science and nature magazines in your house. Tell people on the internet about how snakes fuck.
• Water the succulents on the top shelf that you forgot to water with the bamboo.
• Draw poem fragments on Bay leaves.
• Light thirteen candles and feel the warmth on your face. Read the candles a Sappho poem. Listen to Agnes Obel through headphones that are turned all the way up. Draw a picture of the creatures you see inside your head. Question your sense of proportions. Clean your glasses.
• Tie a skirt across the space between your kitchen and dining room to create a new room.
• Eat an entire sleeve of Saltines. Watch your feet swell from the sodium.
• Try to do 30 jumping-jacks. Cry.
• Make Chamomile tea.
• Slow-blink the cat.
• Write an arbitrary list and pretend its poetry.