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Covid19 Journey Day 30

April 20, 2020


April 20,2020
Wow, we have landed on a new national holiday. One to celebrate the much loved and much-maligned marijuana species. Can you feel the unescapable lampoon coalescing around such an articulated date (4/20/20/20 resounding like an echo) as it falls squarely within this year of plague? Legitimate in this country for less than a decade, cannabis dispensaries have been designated (in its legal status) as an essential business. I have made a note of this fact in previous entries, I sure.  Somehow today, the irony sank in. And this new high holiday celebrates not only a weed with its gift for intangible elevation and expansion, but it hallows the doors of perception for laughter and open-heartedness that swing wide when we imbibe. In San Francisco, I read about a festival planning committee that spent eight months putting together the first-ever free 4/20 event with legal weed for sale when the pandemic hit.  So that party moved online. But I know stoners love to cross formal boundaries and ignore inconvenient rules. They want to be of the invisible folk, and who can blame them for cultivating such habits after years of prejudicial attitudes and unfair legal consequences for their choice of prayer. Still and indubitably, there will be a spike in infections next week.

Today’s idea – Presence was our palliative today. After classes, I opened the art room and invited interested students to make vision/dream boards. We painted or collaged canvases with images and words to cue our day to day thoughts to what really matters and to what outcomes we wish to invite.  But really the medicine comes with giving in those moments awash in creative process and beauty making. I watched how each artist ventured out with a different compass and paddle. Every board emerged fresh face and radiant. Our days are a cauldron holding moments mostly purposeful and routine in nature, sometimes predatory and scary.  There is always room for “what else.”  When we push aside the routines or daily expectations, we and peek into a more primal garden, in the present moment, and can find ingredients to blend with the dull and worrisome thinking that oxbows us off from more restorative flows we need. Life is mostly struggle and conundrum, the ocean is often busy with waves and strong currents, a well-traveled road is full of potholes. You get what I mean. To mix what we know with the enigma of intuition and imagination, can infuse difficult times with a perfect prescription and improve out salubrity. Have you noticed how “Take care, stay healthy” is the new farewell? Our dream boards hang in a conspicuous place in our rooms now, like any good fetish, they are our touchstones of evocative and subliminal messages to remind us of the magic we invited in. Take care, stay healthy.

Today’s observation – There are an abundance of official responses to this viral outbreak – personal, municipal, county, state, federal. It feels rather hodge-podged, and I understand it is all supposed to be parochial and relevant to the place and situations of local citizens. This is a high idea that is up to its knees in political manure. Science laid out useful truths for protocol and policy, and it is up to our leaders to use them in their plans and designs.  Such a logical syllogism get derailed too easily. Our scientists are being demonized by YouTube pundits and religious zealots and, of course, our president. So, we will have to bang up our economy a little more from the rush to get back to “normal,” there is a second and third wave that can wash across the vulnerable and the tired, if we move precipitously.  But what do I know? I agree with to the scientific method. Living in this tsunami age of information and misinformation, I suspect it’s easy measure the merit of information with our experiences, and that we tend to agree with those with whom we identify.  Well then, apparently, we will mud wrestle our way through this unfolding catastrophe. We can call it “The New Bay of Pigs.”  I’m just waiting for the drive through test sites to open here in Iowa. It is a slow go in this rural corner. Under siege for more than a month, PPE is only just now arriving in modestly adequate supply at our hospitals and care centers. So, while we await the aftershocks, can we at least find out who’s still infected before we open “normal’ back up.  As scientifically heretical as that sounds, maybe it’s a good starting place.

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