Podcast
"The Polarity of Immobility"



In this podcast, I explore a self-conceived polarity of immobility through a comparative narrative which highlights two particular spaces in which I have felt immobilized during the COVID-19 pandemic; the airport as well as being on a plane, and the second space being my family home in Vancouver. Of course, thinking about travel during these times is strange, although, I am grateful to have been able to fly safely from Ottawa to Vancouver and back - twice - to visit my family, remaining healthy and all; a true blessing these days. However, as one could expect, the air-travel scene is quite different from how you likely remember it; the airport has essentially become the vessel which captures and exemplifies how we have publicly dealt with COVID-19. Various health-informative signs, physically distancing ground-stickers and tape, sanitizing stations, temperature-checking machines, and physical barriers to close off inessential sections all prevail throughout the airport. As a result, in what is still a space that affords, and transfers me onto a medium of vast mobility (a plane), my movement feels restricted rather than autonomous; and mentally, I feel immobilized by anxious thoughts that ensure my increased movement equates to increased exposure to potential harm. In the second space - my home -although it being a limited space that affords little mobility, the isolation provided myself with the opportunity grasp control and bring my relationship with my older brother out of a static, immobile state. Being isolated together has been a means of bringing us together in a unforced manner, and through our times together just over this past Christmas break, it has felt like our brotherhood has been given a sense of revival. Though we were physically immobile, our connection regrew into a into something it has not looked like or felt like in many years. Therefore, in how I have conceived my feelings towards these aforementioned spaces, I have, too, learned that even the vastest of spaces and great mobility can feel confining and restricting, and vice versa - forced immobility in a static space affording togetherness and a chance to grow.

