Confinement
by Pacho Coulchinsky
Chapter II - A vision shared with my friend Keef Charles
Our common dear friend Keef Charles invited us, in his latest Progressive Street article he titled "Confinement," to think of all the times we experienced confinement before in our lives.
I started to think about his request and went back to the 9 months that I was in the peaceful womb of my mother, nothing dramatic has to have happened because I do not remember something worth telling about that paradisiacal experience.
But what a surprise: the first memory (dramatic?) that comes to mind is the time I spent locked in a totally dark room for almost half a year when I barely had four, all because of an insolent piece of glass that stole my left eye forever. Well ... calling this situation dramatic is something appropriate for my heartbroken parents: for me and thanks to a nice old Ophthalmologist who baptized me as the "pirate", the experience became one of the most pleasant moments of my life: my parents at my absolute disposal, readings of stories at all times, eat in bed and other delicacies to the tone. But all the good things end, and my confinement is over when the Ophthalmologist realized that confining myself in absolute darkness would not give me back my vision (or perhaps my parents got fed up with the pirate's demands? ... I imagine they are It was the most important reason to end that torture).
Much has been written and more will be written about what we have had to experience at this moment in history. Causes, consequences, positive and negative effects, catastrophe, rediscovery, apocalypse, rebirth ... and so on to infinity. The only certainty, at least until now and in my opinion, is that we are reflecting and reasoning that our world is our common home, and we are all in the same boat ... No one is invulnerable, no one is omnipotent, no one is exempt of the ravages that we are all suffering at the moment: physical, mental, economic, social, etc. I also wonder if the rudder of this boat is manoeuvred by the right hands and I am afraid we have chosen the captains quite lightly, not to say stupid.
I have searched my archives, as Keef suggests, for some examples of confinement. And almost immediately, the first tab that fell was that of here called "carritos" (food trucks), so popular here and around the world. At least in my city they are an excellent excuse to meet friends at night to eat a good “lomito” and have a few beers, especially in the summer. If you are alone, there is no need to make prior plans, it is enough to go to your favourite and surely you will find a round of friends there that will make a place for you at the makeshift tables in the public gardens where they are installed throughout the year.
When this quarantine began, all of the food trucks were forced to close its doors but with the passing of the days, they began to work for delivery.
I had some images in my files that some of you already know, but I wondered what would become of its in these times of urban solitude. So breaking the rules a bit, I went with my camera to tour my small town in search of history. I must confess that I love to wander in the solitude of its empty streets, to listen to the silence (Cage was finally right with his piano concert without notes ... the silence is also worth listening to), the barking of a dog in the distance, so far could I not define its origin, the slight sound of the wind in the trees, the rain that begins to fall on the sidewalk ... This was for me a fantastic find, something like returning to those sounds of my childhood, where my town, at nightfall, it became a ghost town. Wonderful!
But let's go back to the food tracks: sadly I found several of them closed, others, only attended by no more than two confined cooks. When I got in and out of my car, some went ahead and asked me to please not get out of the car because they were working with the delivery modality and they could not take orders "live and direct" as they were at risk of being closed, but after explaining what I was doing, they felt accompanied and allowed me to go down and do my job, in addition to listening to them expressing their fear at the lack of work and the possibility of disappearing from the business. These are people who do not work in the best conditions and they do it seven days a week until very late at night, for now, they can only be until 10 PM. They barely survive because people don't place many orders either for fear that the damn virus is just another ingredient in their hamburger.
We all hope that the confinement will end soon. "Los Cumpas", "Los gordos", "Abuela Máxima", "Los topos", "Fede Carribar", "El fenómeno ”,“ Susy ”,“ Luna de Mayo ”,“ Chichipío ” and so many more are eagerly awaiting the arrival of families, lovers and endless rounds of friends under the stars. This already takes too long, and for an Argentine (and for the rest of the world I suppose) the consequences can be worse than the Covid 19.
Thank you very much Keef for your inspiring article.
From one pirate ... to another.
With all my love.
Pacho Coulchinsky
Reconquista, April 2020
