Of Fruit and COVID

I stood in front of the granadillas for what felt like an eternity, holding an empty plastic bag in my right hand and a shopping basket in my left. (A granadilla is a small South American fruit, with a round orange hard outer shell, and a white velvety layer in its interior, holding black seeds swimming in a gelatinous sweet pulp). The people at the store, likely rushing to get out of there as soon as possible, felt like ghosts that somehow managed to get around my inert body. My stupor probably looked like a staring contest with these fruits. Their passive silence did nothing but increase my confusion. Perhaps I was waiting in vain for them to give me some clarity, whether an answer to my shopping nightmare or something that would help me make sense of the last few days.

All I seemed able to know at that moment was that I was standing still. I could feel my feet firm on the ground yet anchored without any freedom of movement. Everything else was a blur. My experience of permanence and continuity was questionable, as my sense of temporality was warped. My subjective sense of time was not only out of sync with that of the external world, but it had also lost any remnant of linearity. Any possibility of “going on being” was compromised, and my mind was at the same time frozen and wandering aimlessly in circles.