We’ve all gone a bit crazy this quarantine season. People might be private about it, but we’ve all had at least one major personal demon sneak up on us and force us to do battle in a confined space. I sincerely hope that you are walking out of this whole experience a bigger, stronger human being but I fear that for every person that sweats out their issues in solitude there’s going to be someone who let the loneliness and seclusion get to them.
Until this morning George has been quiet. The guy was a perfect roommate; he paid his share of the bills on time, never brought anyone home and always made sure every dish he touched was clean within the hour. We never really talked much, even before the world ended. I would bump into him from time to time in the kitchen, we’d chuck around a pleasantry or two and then we’d go back to our separate lives. After the lock-down order hit we had a night when we shared a bottle of wine and complained about the new world we were thrust into but after that we went our separate ways. Honestly didn’t think about the guy until he started screaming this morning.
I spent the three months of lockdown in a personal whirlpool of my own, had one of those ‘need-to-hit-up-every-ex-of-mine-because-I-am-still-in-love-with-them’ spirals. While I was riding the carrousel of difficult message boxes I could hear George mutter to himself, I could hear him chipping away at something in the other room, but at the time I really couldn’t care about anything other than whether Sandra Bachmann from 7th grade still thinks about me as much as I think about her. Occasionally I could hear George picking up deliveries from the front door but aside from his occasional walks through the kitchen he was stuck in his room working on arts and crafts. I fought my demons, he fought his and I figured that after facemasks stopped being a legal requirement for leaving the house we could sit down and share our victories.
But he didn’t win. I made it, I am a totally balanced person now, even back on Tinder. But George didn’t win. This morning I got to see the full scale of his defeat.
I was having my wake-up coffee and swiping through potentials when I started hearing stifled screams from his room. Got up to investigate, but before I could reach his door it burst open and George ran out rambling like a madman wearing nothing but his coat and underwear. The dude looked and smelled like he didn’t shower for weeks, had bags under his eyes so prominent that you could mistake him for a raccoon. I barely understood what he was yelling, something about seeing and understanding now, something about a hundred eyed god, crazy shit basically. Kept on waving around some weird wooden statuette in his hands, kept on screaming louder and louder and then, as if something inside of him snapped he dashed out the front door.
His room was absolutely filthy, there was an overwhelming smell of sadness, sweat and rot; if my head wasn’t so stuck on exes during the quarantine I probably would have smelled it from the kitchen. There were food wrappers everywhere, plates that seemed to have seen at least two dozen meals each and a bunch of plastic bottles filled up with something I don’t even want to think about. During our wine talk George mentioned that he was going to pick up woodcarving as a hobby to occupy himself during the lock-down but after entering his room it became obvious that woodcarving wasn’t a hobby. It was an obsession.
The floor was littered with wood shavings, dull knives and chisels peeked out from beneath the sawdust carpet. The rest of the room was dedicated to the products of his obsession. Small wooden statuettes filled the space, some were roughly chiseled outlines of human-like creatures but others were detailed renderings of a man covered in eyeballs. It was as if you could look across the room and trace back a single person’s development as a wood carver. It was almost impressive; if it wasn’t for the eerie way that all of the statues seemed to stare at you.
I am not a snoop. Really. Promise. But when I saw George had left what looked like a journal on his table I couldn’t help myself. I read through the pages and immediately came here. I am not comfortable being locked up in my apartment alone with this knowledge. What I found inside was disturbing. Disturbing enough to anonymously post on the Internet.
Day 1 of The Lockdown
This is going to be fine. Everyone is freaking out but this is going to be fine. Two weeks of being extra careful and then voila, everything will be back to normal. I’ll find a new job, start appreciating the outdoors more and walk out of quarantine with a brand new set of skills. This is going to be fine.
I have a lot of plans for what to do with the next fourteen days; I’m putting together an exercise regiment, downloaded a meditation app and there’s a bunch of free online university courses I want to take a peek at. Figured I’d put together a little journal to keep track of my new habits and hold myself accountable for doing stuff every day. Reckon it might turn out to be a pretty cool record of what this whole situation was like, should be something fun to list through in a decade or two.
Although, I do have a nagging suspicion that it’s not going to be very exciting. ‘I did this many push ups and meditated today, spent my whole afternoon learning about ancient Rome’ doesn’t make for dramatic entries. But ah well.
This is going to be fine. I am going to make good use of my time. Looking forward to writing an entry about my first meditation session tomorrow! Going to go have a drink of wine with the roommate now, she’s having some love life issues.
P.S - Bought some wood and chisels from a hobby store! Gonna try some woodcarving later this week.
Day 11 of The Lockdown
So that didn’t go as planned. Woke up with a mild hangover after the wine-talk so I skipped out on the meditation session and spent the rest of the day watching Netflix and then… Well then the days just blended into one long sluggish panic attack.
I honestly have no concept of time. I didn’t know it was Thursday until I started writing this entry. Each moment seems like it’s been dragging on for an eternity but at the same rate the past two weeks have instantaneously disappeared into a black hole.
I thought it was just meant to be a really bad case of the flu, but Jesus, the news coverage from the hospitals made me feel sick. Like, literally, I spent the first four days legitimately thinking I had the virus but I’m pretty sure the tightness in my chest is just anxiety. It’s nice not requiring a respirator, but that doesn’t make any of this easier.
I haven’t been in a position to do anything for the past eleven days. Can’t focus on meditation, don’t have enough energy to exercise and looking at the list of online courses just makes me feel like an idiot. The only thing that can really hold my attention are mind-numbing YouTube videos and Netflix shows where I can’t even remember the names of the leads. I’ve literally spent the past two weeks lying in bed frying my brain on the computer and being miserable, but this morning something changed.
Religious experience, hallucination, whatever you want to call it, something happened to me this morning. One moment I was watching a forty-minute documentary on how different types of pasta are made and the next I was… watching myself watching a forty-minute documentary on how different types of pasta are made.
It was just as if I was a giant eye-ball floating in the middle of the room looking down at an unshaven mess of a human being lie in his bed. I hovered above the wreck of a man for a couple of seconds until he paused the video. It was as if he knew that I was watching him, he almost looked directly at me before shutting his laptop and getting out of bed. I watched the man stretch, look into the mirror, get sad, then have some sort of stare-based internal discussion with himself and decide to start unpacking the shopping bags from the arts and crafts store.
He sat down at his table with a block of wood and a chisel and started carving away. As soon as that chisel touched the wood I was back in my own skin. Yet even though I was seeing the world through my own eyes my hands felt foreign, as if they were working under instructions from a source outside of myself. I worked at the wood for about an hour, all the way through I felt a strange wave of calm wash over me, as if I was doing something right, as if I was doing something I was meant to do.
As I write this entry I have a weird man-shaped block of wood on my table. It’s all sorts of janky, the left arm is significantly longer than the right, the statuette barely stands on its own and I’m pretty sure if I touched it I’d recoil with a hand full of splinters but I feel a sense of… pride. It’s a good start. It’s a good start but I can do better.
Day 12 of The Lockdown
Guess who’s been productive? Me!
I managed to carve out two more statuettes before going to sleep last night and I just finished off my fifth one for the day! There isn’t a huge improvement in the quality, but at least the arms are starting to look the same length, so that’s nice.
Regardless of crafstmanship though, I’m just happy to be doing something. Filling my days with woodcarving has definitely made the stress of the outside world die down; I haven’t checked the news a single time and outside of having to listen to my roommate get into a weird shouting phone call with her ex I have spent the whole day inside of my own little wooden world.
It’s just nice to make stuff, y’know? Whenever I sit down with that chisel I just get to kind of zone out and let something else work through me, it’s as if my brain takes a backseat and my hands do all the thinking. Honestly wish I started doing this ages ago, it’s great stress relief!
I am a bit worried about where I am going to get more wood to work with, honestly wasn’t expecting for the quarantine to be extended by another two weeks but here’s to hoping that I can find some arts and crafts store that does deliveries.
I should go to sleep. It’s three in the morning, and I will, but I feel like I still might have a statuette or two left in me.
Day 14 of The Lockdown
Sorry for the gap in journal entries, future George. Yesterday just completely got away from me. I didn’t write a journal entry, I barely ate, but I did manage to carve out a whole eight figurines! They’re really taking on a proper shape now; the statuettes are basically little wooden guys with a dotted pattern over their body. With each one I carve the skin gets less splintery and the pattern gets a bit more pronounced. I thought about carving out something else, took a stab at putting together a dog, but I just ended up making another woodman again, guess inspiration isn’t something you can negotiate with.
I am on my last block of wood though, which is giving me a considerable amount of anxiety. I’m scared that as soon as I don’t have a passion project to pour myself into I’ll go back to watching documentaries about pasta and waste whole weeks of my life like I did at the start of the quarantine.
Tomorrow I’m going to take a look around online if there is a way to get wood delivered to the apartment. For now I’ll just carve away a couple more statuettes and hope that Amazon has my back.
Day 15 of The Lockdown
It happened again.
Last night I carved out two more statuettes with the wood that was left and then I tried going to sleep. I spent the whole night in bed drifting between shapeless thoughts, going from global fears of a major economic recession to more local fears of me losing my mind without something to occupy my hands. The longer I lay there the more my thoughts hovered towards the wood. I knew that making the figurines filled me with a sense of purpose, as if I was serving a higher power, as if whenever I grabbed that chisel something else took control of me and willed things into existence by speaking through my hands. If I wasn’t able to carve, if I wasn’t able to be a conduit for something bigger I would just go back to being the person I was at the start of the quarantine. There was only so many more pasta documentaries my mind could handle.
I lay there, staring at my wall, stuck in uncertainty as the room grew progressively brighter and the birds started to chirp outside. And then it happened again.
I was back in the center of the room watching myself lie in bed, but this time I wasn’t alone in my observation. The wooden statuettes, as rugged as their craftsmanship was, were watching the bedraggled man with me. That circular pattern on their skin bloated up into splinter covered eyeballs. Even though I knew they were made of wood, even though I knew that there was no way for them to be alive, they jittered with an organic wetness; a stare of stifled fascination.
We watched as the disheveled man in the bed got up and walked out of his room. He walked through the kitchen and towards the front door, I tried to follow him but he walked much faster than I could float. Before I could even get out of the room the man opened the front door, retrieved something, closed the door and dragged his bounty back into the bedroom.
A black garbage bag; its contents so heavy that the plastic looked like it would snap at any moment. Yet the man dragged it to the table with resigned effort.
Wood, chunks of roughly chopped wood littered over the floor. I watched myself pick up one of the rugged blocks, place it on the table and raise my chisel.
I was back in my own skin, chipping away at the wood as if it was just another one of the store bought chunks, yet as my hands worked under the invisible force my mind started to feel affected as well. I was inside of my own body, but it was as if my senses were being fed glimpses of another place through a metaphysical coffee filter.
The calming smell of a forest wet with dew mixed in with the putrid notes of rotting fish, the tranquil touch of a warm summer wind intertwined with that oppressive air that lingers before a fight, I could hear strained, pleading whispers that spoke to a booming powerful voice. As I worked away at the wood I was transported somewhere else. With each statuette I produced the sensations of this foreign place became stronger and stronger. Yet as discomforting as the odd glimpses were there was an odd calmness resting beneath the strange sensations. It was as if I was doing something right with all this carving, as if the glimpses of that other place were promises of my future, it’s as if I was working towards a greater calling.
I still have some energy left in me. Time to carve some more.
Day 18 of The Lockdown
There are forty statuettes now. The torso and limbs of the figure are pretty much flawless, yet the heads have started to grow strange. It’s as if the pattern from the body has migrated to the head and created a meaty bulbous mass where the skull should be. I need to make more, I know that with each figurine I get better, I know that with each figurine I get closer to what I am destined to create.
I haven’t been sleeping well, or eating well, or doing anything other than wood carving well, but I know that there is a destination I am moving towards. The more I carve the better I fee. The closer I feel to that ephemeral place who’s sensations dance on my skin. I know there is someone there waiting for me. He wants me to carve more. He demands I carve more.
Day 25 of The Lockdown
Every morning I wake to find myself retrieving another garbage bag. Every morning I carve. I carve and he speaks to me.
It is an implacable whisper, but it calms my fears, it eases my confusion. He tells me I am working toward perfection. He tells me that he can see me. He tells me I can work harder, create more, be with him sooner. I will make him proud.
The bulbous mass at the top of the statuette’s heads has become refined into individual spheres, into individual eyes. I am bringing something to life; I am allowing him safe passage into our realm. He can see me with his hundred eyes. He can see when I am wasting time writing these sentimental journal entries.
I am a part of something bigger. I am the carpenter of the Hundred Eyed God. I cannot waste time.
Day 32 of The Lockdown
He can see me. He can see the work.
I have made what he demanded.
He can see me. He can see the work.
The whispered secrets that he has delivered to me will become booming truths and set the world ablaze.
He can see me. He can see the work.
The time of reckoning is at hand.
He can see me. He can see the work.
There are others. They will gather where the air smells of trees and dead fish.
He can see me. He can see the work.
The time has come.
He can see me. He can see the work.
He can see me. He can see the work.
He can see me. He can-
Looks like his pencil tore through the journal here. If my timing is right, that was the last entry George wrote before running out of the house in his underwear and coat.
I honestly don’t know what to make of this. I’ve read through the journal trying to figure out whether there was a point when I could have intervened, whether there was a moment when George and me could have grabbed another wine and hashed everything out. I hope he’s okay, I hope he comes back home and we can talk about it all but I have my doubts.
It’s evening now, with all the smog gone I can actually see the stars shine from my balcony. For most of the lock-down I have spent my evenings with a glass of wine, looking up at the beautiful starry sky, wondering whether Sandra Bachmann is looking at the same thing, but tonight is different.
Tonight I am not thinking about Sandra Bachmann, partially because I am totally over her, but mainly because there’s something in the air. Oppressive electricity lingers in the wind, it’s as if we are all just silently counting down to a disaster. You can see the dog-walkers nervously pick at their facemasks, the cars are barely stopping at red lights, everyone is trying to get home as soon as possible. Something feels undeniably wrong.
The stars are not romantic jewels that make you think about past loves tonight. They are eyes, a thousand blank eyes staring down at us, waiting.