Friendly moods

This exploration is a journeying toward ethical encounters with others in unfamiliar locales. It attends to friendship, close association with non-relatives, and a nexus of themes that arise amidst the COVID-19 global health crisis: quarantine life, networks of belonging and human connections, and new forms of research and productivity. The piece’s ruminative thinking draws on what the author discovers at a personal level in Madrid, Spain, pursuing a knowledge of what is to be gained—produced—by not moving, but from dwelling indoors. Not a travelogue underpinned by tourist optimism, this postcard essay is a travel story of a philosophy of life through friendship and a caring commitment to strangers. This approach allows for coping through and understanding the most important problem of our time, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Duke Scholars

Author Claudia Milian Romance Studies