What the Muses Leave Behind

March 31, 2020 Today’s observation – the humor in these times is dark and getting darker because gallows humor is what is in the mirror. Yesterday in a group text exchange with my sons and distant partner, I shared a fun little video of my Westie wrestling a treat filled toy while sappily singing, “what do you do with a bored little terrier…” The reply came in quickly – “All dogs in the shelters have been adopted, people are going crazy.” And that begged the next comment – “Back up food supply.” Then – “Yeah, it’s a Bark-up supply line.” On the insight side, there is a meme circulating that shows how things have changed in only a century (since the last major pandemic): 1920 – Alcohol and cannabis are illegal.   2020 – Liquor stores and cannabis dispensaries are an essential business during a national health crisis. And then there is this one floating around: “Ran out of toilet paper and now using lettuce leaves. Today just the tip of the iceberg, tomorrow romaines to be seen.” A

March 30, 2020 Today’s observation – I called my doctor’s office this morning to request to be tested for the virus.   I explained my circumstances, how I was asymptomatic, that I worked for a school with a residential program and with an administration that was following the guidance dispatch for quarantine from the governor.   That I had been out of state on Spring Break for two weeks and hence my quarantine.   I also explained that while out of state, I’d stayed with family and helped care and keep company with my elder mother.   I had traveled in a small social circle in a rural area and had no reason to think I’d been in contact with an infected person, having practiced fastidious preventative measures throughout the last fourteen days to keep my mother safe.   (I had to be convincing. The PA at her office told me there was slim to no chance that I could get tested, they just weren’t supplied in this way; and that the governor’s memo was a recommendation not a mandate. I was

March 29, 2020 At last I shelter in my own space and with an imposed two-week quarantine because the governor says so.   Yesterday, I prepared as best I could, but I plan to make an appeal to my doctor to help me get tested even if I am asymptomatic, given the circumstances.   I want to have access to my classroom, that is of the biggest concerns I have. I do have remote lessons to prepare!   Oh, how lucky am I? Today’s observation – BIG WIND greeted me as I pulled onto campus and has pressed on throughout the night and today. There are black vultures riding it like kite surfers on the Mediterranean at Tarifa.   As I unloaded my bicycle and pushed it onto the porch, a huge limb crashed to the ground and shattered behind me.   Major spring cleaning by Mama Nature!   More normalcy from the big world beyond our drama. Gratitude.   Today I hear the ghost sounds of the others who share the Carriage House dorm with me, and my pup presses his nose to the crack beneath the door, insp

March 28, 2020 Today’s observation – The morning traffic on 174 West has been thin – mostly 18-wheelers.  I am among the scant population of passenger vehicles.  I see no buses.  The land has been cloaked in ground fog; the sky is overcast. This scenery reminds me of TS Elliot’s poem, The Wasteland . April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.  It has been interesting to witness how open businesses implement safeguards again infection for their employees and customers. Stopping for a coffee at the Circle K, the lone employee/cashier greeted me from a side room, only showing her face again at the register when I was ready to check out.  I had grabbed a cup and pressed a few buttons to get my freshly ground brew.  Once at the checkout, I stood behind a taped line on the floor between two safety cones, leaning in to set my cup of Joe on the counter.  The cashier really had no contact with

March 27,2020 Today’s observation – I have discovered where the intrepid Indiana families go for social distancing – they go to their nearest state park campground.   For my overnight accommodation, I sequestered myself and my pup at a park south of Indianapolis on a wooded ridge, at a corner site surrounded by RVs parked at tangential angles from me and a good fifty yards away.   I pulled out my hammock and strapped it between two big trees. Some gave me nervous looks as I took a walk around the campground to stretch my legs, but they were easily disarmed with a smile. We are in this together.   Kids were riding their bikes and playing corn hole.   Family dogs were tethered while parents grilled hamburgers and drank beer in the warm slanted light.   It was an outback suburbia. I climbed into the hammock with my back to the busy scene and took in the slope of leafless trees beyond me.   If not for a forecast of thunderstorms later in the night, I would have slept there, but by

March 26, 2020 Driving West again, my return to Iowa on the Mississippi River and my students. Today’s Image - 96.5 degrees F. - that is my temperature today.  I am asymptomatic, feeling fine. Like millions of others, I search myself for telltale body sensations, ones I’ve read about and heard of - a scratchy throat grabs my attention, a cough after eating a dry snack without a washdown raises my heart rate for a moment.  I’ve been unable to stop touching my face - nose itches and I must scratch it, saliva pools at the corners of my mouth, sometimes drips down a fine crease off my lips if I am extra juicy and I have to wipe it away; sometimes an eye waters for no good reason and needs dabbing too. I am prone to rest my cheek bone or chin on my palm or thumb when listening at a table. The vectors of transmission grow long and unkind. Sure, as I get more aware of my interminable face handling tendencies, I compensate by chronically cleaning my hands, even using my wrist in a slee

March 25, 2020 It’s almost time to travel again, I must get back to school and the dorm.  The international students who can’t go home now, need me too.   I’ll leave tomorrow, stopping to overnight with my son.  Push on then for a two-day drive: Tennessee to Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa.   As I check the infection map, I hope the route I take can avoid hotspots, allowing my Escape capsule to deliver me uneventfully home where I will go into self-quarantine for 14 days.  That’s my intention. Today’s observation - Have you notice how the boomers are taking care of themselves?  I have!   We are walking once or twice a day on wooded walkways, running along ridge trails, doing yoga with our favorite YouTube teacher, shopping for ourselves and our families at the early hours.  On a walking trail today, I passed a pasty fellow wearing his weighted vest, slow and steady in his gait - creases from his C-pap mask straps, still visible on his cheeks. Off   the Blue Ridge Parkway

March 23, 2020  New Moon in Aries Today’s image - Crows still fly across the bare gray Appalachian canopy at the foot of Howard’s Knob.  Maples still push the fuchsia fringe off apical woody tips.   My oldest son still shares bits of comic relief with a shared video. In it a southern man with a rural mountain twang to his speech warns his neighbors of a girl who has walked up to him (the camera points down a gravel road cutting across a field with a fence row of trees and a barn and other buildings in the background). He says, “Things are getting real now.  She offered me a donut and a blow job for a roll of toilet paper,”   Still the robins poke about for careless earthworms. (maybe they are not careless, just resigned) and my Westie still lives to bounce around the woods refusing my pleas to come.  He’s a good mirror who follows his bliss.   To shelter in place in this mountain town helps to keep my perspective wide, allows me to be contemplative more than reactionary.   I

March 23, 2020 - Happy Birthday John! Today’s idea - what if humans were plants? A body of absorbing cells, practicing osmosis to define its posture and constitution.  Wait! Humans are all this too, these ways of living that were passed on to us from our phototropic progenitors,  we are kin with those woody sages peopling the Earth with us.  Do plants feel fear like us? Do they receive dispatches that make them anxious and tucked in?  We wake to floods of fearful news.   We want to shrivel up like scared hedgehogs as a way to shield ourselves.  Meanwhile, even in a storm of ping pong ball size hail, trees keep themselves open to receive light, drawing in seasonally instead of episodically. It seems to me that now is the most important time to stand fortified, strong. We have what we need, we built our homes from the bounty of our place. Our volition shows up now as privilege. With all the things we have taken as if they were just given, surely we can employ their attributes no

March 22, 2020 This act of journaling here and now is long overdue So much has happened in only a few weeks in this waking world. So much meets what has happened in only a few weeks in the dream world. My waking and dream self have volumes to digest.  I’ve decided to commence this journal in pieces - I’ll pick an image, an idea and an observation each day. Today’s image - it is a dream of me facing a wall of water, a building wave.  I wade in and swim toward it with everything I’ve got. I seek the sweet spot, the heart of the wave where it will wash over me and not pound me into the sand.  When I fail to find that spot, feeling myself lifted by a monstrous force hungry to fling me asunder, I change my trajectory and even my physical/energetic body.  I grow into an arrow.   Better to fly than be flung, I think. Another image - in my concern for a precious friend in Colorado, as she struggles with the viral wolf, I conjure an astral visit. In a flash, I am walking