Amid the lockdown, Ed Marszewski’s Public Media Institute paused publishing its alternative magazine, Lumpen, and broadcasting from its community FM station, Lumpen Radio. But it didn’t stop its output altogether; it just retooled for our times. PMI created a website where local writers, social workers, artists, and other creative types could submit their reflections on and responses to being stuck at home. This March, PMI released The Quarantine Times, a physical time capsule of the project, more than 500 pages of inspired images, scraps, and musings of life indoors. Here, an excerpt from writer and artist Diddle Knabb’s essay about having to coparent with her ex-husband during the pandemic.

Imagine this pitch: Social isolation got you down? Consider moving in with your ex-wife for an unknown amount of time! Her new baby is fresh off of colic and still cries regularly, and if you’re lucky, you might be able to hear [your ex] getting pounded by her partner during a late night sexcapade — these walls certainly are thin! Also if you get bored, she has a bunch of shelves she needs you to put up, because she doesn’t know how to use tools. Best of all, you’ll be staying in what Iggy calls the “skunk room” because it’s scary and apparently smells like ass. Wakka wakka wakka.