Hawaii Pacific Review

by Rebecca Bihn-Wallace

I am an observer. I most likely can’t tell you what I ate for breakfast this morning, nor can I keep track of my belongings or change the oil on a car or explain the stock market in any real sense, but I remember the interior of every house I’ve lived in, and could probably even tell you how the  furniture was arranged. I have been cursed with the curious combination of operating in two worlds: the real world, which is often loud and confusing and leaves me at times baffled; and the imagined world, the life of the mind, which is soothing but not always the best place to be. That is to say, I am a writer. Because of this, I wasn’t aware of my need for regular human contact until the pandemic hit. It came upon slowly, this pandemic, or I think it did; now when I look at the timeline of events, I think, Weeks, not months.  Weeks for my state to go on lockdown, weeks for my university to close, weeks for shelter in place to begin. Months for people to rebel, months for the country to undergo another racial paroxysm. Continue reading →