May
14, 2020
Today’s
introversion – The lousy news felt oppressive and odious; it's been wearing me
down. Solitaire has become a default
occupation when I am not gleaning the news.
This is a bad sign. A better choice
could be to write notes to a few friends with the new cards I got from Etsy
just for this moment. Some old fashion thank notes are long overdue and probably
just the antidote for this malaise. The
runes that one of my dearests made for my birthday, out of cherry from a piece
of the deadfall in her yard, reminded me that not only do I need to send her a
note, but I also need to initiate them. And then there is my bestie who just
had her thyroid removed today after years of procrastination until it almost
killed her with blood pressure swings. But
instead of correspondence, I listened to the heat exchange unit as it growled and gurgled,
watching the digital display dance through random numbers like a terrier after
a squirrel. Then after sitting irked at that machine for far too long, I got up
and pressed the power off button. I have
conjured up some sorry ways to pass the evening.
Why
not a restorative of a cuppa PG Tips? I put the kettle on as I settled into the
next admonishment. If I were more Zen, I could be kinder to myself and simply
observe the dark indolence as another human moment. The mirror that rose in my mind held an infinite line of
first world gloomers looking into our jeweled chalices sitting in our air
conditioned rooms in overstuffed club chairs, feet up on ottomans. The funk of
foiled summer plans or missing the grandkids stagnant around us. But I wanted to elevate my discontent and put
forward an effort at gratitude about my comfy, safe space, a piping hot cuppa,
and biscuits. Admittedly I’m a member of the 1% in global terms, those who can
shelter in place for as long as it takes, my creature comforts and ample
resources are enviable. From that thought, the door that swung open was my imagination about all
the ways people are struggling now – tenuously stranded in a country
far from home, at risk in every way; and then comes COVID. There are those, already ill and sequestered in
a cramped spaces with their big families, like a bat clustered with her colony and fatally
infected with the fungus enveloping noses and wings as they winter sleep. I scroll
through several more dire scenes to give my blue devil company, but shaming is
an old adversary, with whom I want to make peace.
And
it is not the inconvenience of life that bothers me. Clearly, I have none. My hair shirt is a mental one. I gather
information and pin it to an inner wall map of likely outcome scenarios – the ones
I pray will happen and those with which I hate to reconcile if things simply return to a pre-pandemic status quo. If my melancholy was of my own making, I needed only to shift this narrative. So what if the heat exchanger was banging like
a toddler with a pot and spoon or that my tea was too strong and that my
choices for political solution were too soft.
There is undoubtedly a hackney platitude about attitude I could tell
myself. Perhaps “we are all in the
gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars," or “if you do
not change your direction, you may end up where you are headed,” or “there
is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
Here,
on a refuge of a small but spacious school campus, and at this moment, all is
just fine, and I have been very well.
The evening thunderstorm outside demonstrates a most prominent attitude, announcing
more rain to enrich an opulent season. Watch me, watch me, flash the sheets
of lightning. I thought, here are the most unbridled and treacherous encounters for this day.
It would seem, I
am living a dream that gives thunder lots of pomp, and seldom has it served me to put much worry in such weather.
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