{"id":356303,"date":"2021-11-23T06:05:39","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T20:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=356303"},"modified":"2021-11-23T06:05:39","modified_gmt":"2021-11-22T20:05:39","slug":"thanks-and-more-out-the-quarantine-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/thanks-and-more-out-the-quarantine-door\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanks and More Out the Quarantine Door"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This revision completes the five lines at the end of my Literary Nook submission published on Monday, Nov. 15, 2021.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Quarantine in Limbo: A Purgatory Story<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sitting here in Limbo waiting for the tide to flow,<br \/>\nsitting here in Limbo knowing that I have to go&#8221;<br \/>\n<strong>\u2014Lyrics excerpt from Sitting\u00a0In Limbo by Jimmy Cliff.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Last year my older sister put me in quarantine<br \/>\n14 days where I grew up in upstate New York<br \/>\n2 flights coast to coast to visit my ailing brother<br \/>\nI had no objections to the old familiar scene<br \/>\nin isolation when it was time for knife and fork<br \/>\nI ate in the kitchen of our departed mother<br \/>\nout back were woods and overgrown roads<br \/>\nI walked in fall foliage where I did as a boy<br \/>\nto\u00a0safely see my brother brought me great joy<br \/>\nI was allowed to get water from the kitchen sink<br \/>\nThen came a Tantalus tease hard to forget .<br \/>\n10 days next to the sea my feet never got wet<br \/>\nTantalus tried to serve his son for food to guests<br \/>\nhis punishment being unable to reach food or drink<br \/>\nour word \u201ctantalizing\u201d comes from that Greek myth.<br \/>\nNow in Saipan for ten days into quarantine I go<br \/>\n&#8220;sitting here in Limbo&#8221; between\u00a0heaven and hell<br \/>\nwhat this pandemic\u00a0purgatory is like\u00a0I can&#8217;t tell<br \/>\nat a seaside resort in a 5th floor isolated\u00a0room<br \/>\ndreading a positive test and impending doom<br \/>\nthree meals daily and some fresh vegan meals<br \/>\nI&#8217;m learning how a life in limbo isolation\u00a0feels<br \/>\nthough pandemic purgatory is not that great<br \/>\nthere&#8217;s time for writing and putting on weight.<br \/>\nTen days inside a room is really quite a bore<br \/>\nbut the delta COVID variant is hard to ignore.<br \/>\nStay safe, give thanks for those helping us.<\/p>\n<p>***<br \/>\n<em>Joey aka Pepe Batbon Connolly is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is a sonnet practitioner who enjoys stargazing.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This revision completes the five lines at the end of my Literary Nook submission published&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":355846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,23672,23673],"class_list":["post-356303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-cnmi","tag-lvnv","tag-nola"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}