April
13, 2020
Today’s
observation - 32°F – That’s the temperature outside this
morning, with a stiff breeze and I’m grateful once again for a warm parka with
such a bracing start for the week. A
cold front pushed heavy rain through last night, but we woke to sunshine breaking
up the cloud canopy enough to illuminate a hillside of Virginia Bluebells, slowly
pushing open clusters of buds. No sign
of melancholy, it is another storm that passed in the night. John, the adjuster
from USAA, arrived first thing in his big Dodge Ram pickup to do the estimate.
This process is on a roll like a cat eye marble on a sidewalk. The appraisal was done in my driveway, the appraiser
sent it to the insurance claims department, the next day the money was in my
account and I had an appointment with the body shop, the rental car will be
delivered to me there as I drop my Escape off tomorrow. Boom, bam, bing, bong –
I am a pinball traveling the shuts and flippers of the claims department
arcade. Doing my part for the local economy,
acolyte of an act of God. The news reports that Covid confirmed cases in Iowa
are just over 1900, with confirmed deaths at forty-six. New York has passed 200,000
confirmed cases with 10,000 deaths. I am teaching today. Taking a break from this
pandemic (because I can) to guide students in discussion about the ways we
energize our societies. I’m asking them
to use their analytical minds and give the emotional head some space. I wonder how their weekends went. Being
teenagers, probably with a lot of sleeping, gaming and then the calls
home. I am grateful for the briskness of
today’s air, it is therapeutic, and I slip out several times to lose myself in
that medicine.
Today’s
idea – So much to preserve these days.
Keeping up appearances, keeping up a routine, keeping healthy and happy,
keeping my hands clean and off my face, keeping safe and sane, keeping company
with good books and music, keeping in touch and out of trouble, keeping up with
my lessons, keeping soup on the stove, keeping the weight off, Keeping my heart
open and my body limber, keeping a sense of humor, keeping hope intact, keeping
the bills paid, keeping my dreams alive, keeping on the sunny side, always on
the sunny side, keeping one step ahead and humble. As I ride this swell of turmoil and mishap, there
is a tendency to want to hug up and hold on.
What if instead, the moment calls for arms flung wide in the abandon of
a maple seed on a May breeze? This moment will carry us to unexpected places,
where we are not sure how things will be. How do we ride it without trepidation?
Why not like a wave off Puerto Escondido. Once we land, we can crack open, dig
in and grow.
Today’s
image – my dear Colorado friend is recovering from her bout with the beast, and
she sent me two new poems today. Here is
evidence of the stunning genius and beauty that rides suffering and peril. I kneel before her words:
A Ghazal in 9 Rooms
(3 Invisible)
“In the room of the mind, we
need to touch the things of the world.” ~ After Madeleine Thien
A novelist sits typing in a Safeway
in the 17th century.
Vermeer’s aproned woman slices bread
through Eternity.
His kitchens make us heartsick for
home.
All writing is a kind of
migration,
a series of rooms, Proust says, we
never arrive in.
We open door after door, looking for
home.
Our lives are moves in an endless
game of Go.
The atoms we disbursed jumping rope
on the playground,
Travel back to Chidambaram, where
Shiva Nataraja is home.
Spinoza’s books lay hidden in a salt
mine for a hundred
years.
Heidegger wrote, the essence of
our being is shaped by death.
My father, at the end, longed only
for home.
No one knows where we go when we
think.
All a telescope shows is our past:
we search galaxies, secretly.
Home.
We marry light to sound, time to
space,
break a thousand vows in our sleep.
Every promise reminds us of home.
-
Judyth
Hill
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