Pareesa Pourian
On March 11, 2020, I flew from New York City to New Orleans, Louisiana. From there I made my way to my parents' house in Baton Rouge for a weeklong visit. A few days later New York City went into lockdown and I settled into my childhood bedroom for an unknowable amount of time -- it ended up being three months. My parents and I fell into each other’s rhythms. They left me alone in the mornings while I walked barefoot in the yard drinking coffee, and I sat down with them for dinner at 4pm. Every morning my dad would bring in the local paper and I'd rifle through for interesting pictures (usually of pelicans) and the sudoku puzzle. Then I saw the grocery store ad, always accompanying either death announcements or weather. Excited by the combination of spiky cartouches and hunks of meat or cans and boxes and tubs, I started coloring over the cmyk print with ballpoint pens. The circular was printed multiple times a week and the kitchen drawer was full of pens for me to mark and collect the days.
