The View from the Basement

Matt Kung

Since getting back from school, I’ve spent most of my time in my basement. I suppose I cannot argue that it’s a good spot to stay isolated from my family, and even more so from the world. It plays the part well too: the concrete walls and floors are rarely illuminated well enough to see the years-old coat of grime that covers them, the temperature seldom rises above fifty degrees until the summer months, and whenever someone flushes the toilet upstairs the overhead pipes shake dust down on my head. Even on a sunny day, the far wall typically remains shrouded in darkness, an empty backdrop that only further emphasizes the conspicuous glow of my laptop.

Whatever I may feel about living down here, my basement matches the mood of quarantine uncannily. The darkness envelops me, leaving nothing to see but my phone and my computer, bringing an odd sense of concentration even as I drift aimlessly between websites and games. That screen is like an anchor, the only thing tethering me to reality in an otherwise dark room made even darker as my eyes grow accustomed to focusing on the uncomfortably-bright screen for hours on end. This feeling of being adrift, barely hanging on to the threads of what give me identity, is the essence of the quarantined life. The smallest things – a midnight deadline, a call from a friend – are all that’s left of the structure and meaning that once made my life unique and purposeful. There is at once nothing and everything to do down here. With the blessing of a decent internet connection, boxes full of old books, and even a makeshift workout space, there is nothing preventing me from being fully productive. Perhaps the lack of distractions should even be a blessing, a chance to focus on what really matters. But this brings up an even tougher question: what does matter? The rest of life is as monotone as the dark grey concrete wall in front of me. I’ve started to think that contrast is a key to happiness in life. There needs to be a divide between work and relaxation, awakeness and sleep, day and night, but when all of life occurs in the same house, on the same computer, with the same people there is nothing for the mind to pinpoint as important. For me, the only thing that creates this divide is the trip up the stairs to my room sleep and then the trip back down again when I wake up – something that occurs in roughly twenty-five hour cycles, pushing bedtime back bit by bit each day. As life blurs into one long continuum of active inactivity, even things that should seem fun lose some of their value, because to appreciate a positive experience we need clearly defined negative experiences with which to contrast it.

There is, however, one point of this much-needed contrast in my basement. My house is situated on a hill, so one side of my basement has a glass door with a view into the forest below. The best decision I’ve made in quarantine was moving my desk adjacent to it a few weeks ago. The natural light stands out starkly against the gloomy corners of the room, and until I spent ten hours per day in front of a window, I had never realized the amount of wildlife that passes through my backyard regularly. Several stray cats routinely run past, birds peck for seeds in the moss, and at night opossums and raccoons often come up to the window to inspect the light source. As small as these moments may be, they are a refreshing reminder that the world continues to go on even in the depths of the pandemic. It’s almost unfathomable to imagine that these creatures will live out their entire life cycles without ever thinking about the virus that occupies so much of my own mind and the minds of all of humanity. As I look at the trees swaying just a few dozen feet away from my window and watch the sun gradually sink below them every night, I realize that even if the trees and the stars could be aware of the virus, it would be nearly meaningless to them, barely an event worthy of notice over the course of their long life cycles. Even more disturbing to consider is the moths that have started thumping their heads against my door at night as it warms up. They will likely live out their entire life cycles in the midst of the pandemic. Even if they somehow cared about it, it would seem as normal to them as a typical school day did for me before the virus.

It is thoughts like these that spur me back into action. Even as life seems to stand still during the virus, time continues to pass. Though my basement has looked the same for years, the world that I watch outside my window is changing by the day. We all may be trapped in this bubble of inactivity, but outside something is always moving and changing without us, and we can’t let ourselves fall behind.