National Park of Sadness

Big losses are layered with small ones now. One of mine has been not being able to go swimming, as the community centres and outdoor public pools are closed and unlikely to re-open soon. As the weather gets warmer, I feel frustrated that swimming won’t be part of my summer and I can feel a sense of sadness creeping in. I miss the casual conversations in the changing room, the walk through tiled hallways to reach the pool, and the effortless way the water holds my body and allows my limbs to float weightless in space. It is a moment of refuge from the noise of the world and of solitude among the other swimmers. All of this hit me the other day as I walked by a neighbourhood apartment building and looked in through streaked dirty windows to the pool area. The pool was empty, drained, a canyon in the midst of a dark quiet room. The tiles at the bottom of the pool (usually underwater) were sky blue and there were lounge chairs on the side of the deck waiting for people to return.

Seeing the empty pool made me realize I’ve been carrying an undercurrent of sadness for all the things that have changed. In the context of larger losses that COVID has brought - health, employment and lives - this seems trivial. But the empty swimming pool is a stark reminder of how I long for the pleasures of everyday life that I thought would always be there. The National Park of Sadness is an empty space devoid of activity or sound. There is a haunted quality to it - as if it has been suddenly abandoned and there are only the faint echoes of previous human life now. If one looks closely there are also glimpses of beauty and reminders of the way things used to be, and could be once again.

Karen Gold, Age 58
Toronto, ON

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This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

National Park of Nostalgia

As my final year of secondary school comes to a close, I’ve been revisiting my camera roll from the past four years. Because our school required us to have iPads, my friends and I have documented a lot of our experiences—school trips, restaurants, parks, birthdays, etc. I decided to make my friends a slide show of all the pictures I'd taken, and to score it to the song “Time Adventure,” from my favourite tv show, Adventure Time. As I edited the slideshow, I was overcome with intense nostalgia for all the happy memories that I'd shared. Making the slideshow took hours, so I listened to the lyrics, “Will happen, happening, happened,/And we’ll happen again and again,/ ‘Cause you and I will always be back then,” until late into the night, revisiting all these experiences as if I was living them for the first time. Because it's difficult during these times of isolation to make new memories, it's easier to look behind than ahead. Nostalgia is a complicated emotion to describe; that mix of fondness and sadness, with underlying tones of regret, has often crept up on me. But I don't think I've felt it as intensely as I did that midnight at the beginning of June.

You enter the National Park of Nostalgia through a lake in which you can breathe perfectly. Your first view of the park is from below, through the distorted surface of the lake. The park can be visited in any season—sometimes it is covered in snow, sometimes in wildflowers. Everything is smaller in the park, and warped, as if you were looking at something stuck in a snow globe. You may choose to wander the small paths that go on and on, or you can visit the caves that are only ever as big as a bedroom. It is always twilight in the park, and it is always body temperature, even if you visit in the middle of winter. It is neither easy nor hard to leave this park—in fact it seems like it slowly fades away before your eyes. 

Arwen, Age 17
Montreal, QC

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This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

National Park of Rage

This past weekend my family of four, including our dog, visited a state park in Northern Minnesota. Beautiful woods, long hikes, rock formations, waterfalls, tents, smores, campfires. It was a great way to recharge and get away from Covid-19 and the unrest in Minneapolis. When I returned home and started looking at my pictures, I was suddenly struck by how much time I’ve spent staring at screens during the pandemic. And how little they have given me. A weekend in the woods had actually nourished my soul. But these small colorful images on my phone were lacking in anything natural or nourishing. My digital devices had become the oppressors. The Netflix show, the Zoom call, the online yoga class. I had just experienced real outdoor freedom, and the stuff on my screen was a pale substitute.

I felt a rage rising up in me. I’d been brainwashed into this reality. And living my life through a tiny screen, when the world is so open and inspiring, is nuts. 

“Rage Against the Machine” National Park is not a fun or beautiful park, though it’s expansive, with rivers, forests, and mountains. It’s tired and worn down. It promised so much when it first opened. But the pathways are all too far from actual nature. The forest is always just up that hill, the mountain is a little too far to get to, the animals are always absent. You get to “enjoy” it on giant iPads with awesome billboard-sized infographics, and video screens with bird’s eye view drone footage, and great facts about the park’s flora and fauna. There are many long winding sidewalks with informational signs. There’s always someone asking you to download an app for the park so you can really embrace the experience. And everywhere there are people taking selfies or making TikTok videos. There’s really no fucking park to enjoy. It’s just a place to take our phones out for a walk.

David MacGillivray, Age 56
Minneapolis, MN

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This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

National Park of Overwhelm

Living in a busy household with a lot of competing needs while working at a demanding job makes every day a marathon—a marathon being undertaken while juggling knives. My list of things to do each day is mythic, laughable, and bears little relationship to what actually gets done. I am the mediator of big feelings (for both the children and adults of this home), and as a result, my own feelings get stifled, squashed into the smallest possible space. I am desperate for time alone, time to breathe and think and process, but at the same time I have never been more lonely, more starved for substantive connection.

The Park of Overwhelm is huge and crowded with both human-made and natural objects. There are plenty of enticing things, but if you pay attention haphazardly, you may be in danger. Constant vigilance is required, leaving little time for rest or engagement. It's crowded, dangerous, noisy, frantic, exciting, sensual, rich, and stifling.

Anonymous, 44
Toronto, ON

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This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

National Park of Angst

I work as a child and family therapist in an intensive in-home and out-of-home program. I began working with a family with complex needs in early 2019. After COVID-19 hit, the family’s wraparound supports were reduced to virtual bi-weekly “check-in’s.” As the family remained quarantined together, tension escalated and risk of family breakdown increased. Recently, I coordinated a meeting with the family and service providers. During the meeting, a few comments were made about why I wasn’t “doing more” to “fix” the child. In this moment, I felt an overwhelming sense of angst, which I describe as a mixture of anxiety and fear. I began questioning my own competence. What if I don’t do enough and the risk increases? What if the family blames me if the child gets hospitalized? What if I’m the reason they don’t progress in their treatment? I felt like a small ant navigating through a forest of weeds, uncertain of how I got in or how to get out. 

My National Park of Angst is a dense, overgrown natural forest, full of shadows and rough terrain. It is dusk, midsummer, and the humidity makes it uncomfortable to breathe deeply, like a veil I cannot push off my face. The air leaves a film of sweat and moisture on my skin, and smells of rotting natural debris, leaves and bark. Large roots grow out of a hard soil littered with rocks, fallen leaves, and broken branches. The vague path is cluttered with low brush that scratches at my legs and low-hanging branches that poke at my head and shoulders. In the distance I can see fading sunlight through the treetops. I can hear birds calling and the scuttering sounds of critters but I can’t see them in the shadows. As I navigate through the forest, I occasionally come across a small clearing where the air is less dense and the path more visible. Walking through the park feels like both an exploration and a search for an exit.

Carmen Chui, Age 35
Guelph, ON

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This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

National Park of Helplessness

Sequestered, and with my son away camping with his father, I've had the house to myself. My iPhone and the skin of my palm have nearly sealed together. The day's rhythms have nothing to do with me. 3 am is the new 11 pm. I’m dating online in the midst of Covid-19 and the uprising against police brutality/growing fascism in the wake of public lynching of George Floyd. The usual loneliness and yearning have taken a new shape.

Welcome to The National Park of Helplessness. There’s no map and no signs to orient visitors, so I don’t know whether I am near, or miles from, an exit. It’s possible that there is only one exit, and there is no point in looking for it. There are a thousand entrances. The park has been blanched of color. Everything appears in shades of muted blues and greys. I walk along a very narrow path buttressed by glass walls. The only thing there is to touch beyond my own body is the cool, flat wall. It is windy on the other side, yet nothing stirs. I look for cracks. In the distance, the usual structures—the visitor’s center, food court, bathrooms—are boarded up. One mouse, the only thing that moves in this park and the only other sentient being, scurries outside the food court. There is nothing left for it to find. The mouse does not know that it is doomed.

Jordana Jacobs, 48
Brooklyn, NY

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This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.