This week has been somewhat tough, despite holiday rest. I did have that long overdue shingles vaccine on Tuesday because heaven forbid I catch a case of shingles while living in my isolation cocoon. But then again, R had it out of the blue this time last year and the friendly GP has been reminding me ever since.
So, with such splendid fatigue and a grand potpourri of aches and pains, I try to remind myself that, yes, this body is still my own.
Most days, I try to make a joke since after all, I have been working really hard to be one of those people who seem to live through all of this with courage and humour. And sarcasm. Don't forget sarcasm, that handy disguise of despair.
Anyway, don't try this at home, it doesn't work.
In the absence of any further cohesive thought from me, I will just paste a couple of things I have picked up along the way.
Half way through my two week September holiday - and still more to come! A week each in October, November and December. The beauty of German civil service regulations.
I don't miss a thing, apart from maybe a visit to the seaside. I mostly sit on the patio, R's voice drifting out of his office upstairs, explaining to some (un)fortunate final year student the intricate workings of cell membrane structures, around me the busy noises of the retired neighbours exercising their expensive gardening tools.
I crawl out of bed every morning in disbelief that this body is actually me. Morning stiffness is a glorious euphemism. This is when dawdling comes in handy. Slow dawdling.
And so I fill my time with pleasant useless stuff until eventually, my limbs begin to respond to my wishes, at least enough to push the bicycle out into the world and get a move on. I have slowly but purposefully increased my daily distance to a now staggering 20 km, which is still a crying shame compared to my healthy past self. Anyway, must take things as they are. By the time I am back home, triumphant and sore, inflamed tendons screaming, more dawdling awaits.
And thinking, trying to explain the world in my head.
In no particular order, this is what's swirling around:
1. The covid conspiracy theories - there are people I know, who really truly want to believe that the world is good at its core, that all power lies with nature. And now this evil nature dishes up a creepy virus. So it must be someone else's fault. I have given up any desire to discuss this. I admit I have avoided phone calls.
2. Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through
our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that
democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
(Isaac Asimov)
3. Garden. Here is one blossom from each of the currently flowering plants. As of today. We are inundated by wasps this year and we have completely surrendered one apple tree and most of the grapes. They feed on it in a frenzy for a day and end up dead on the patio stones. In other words, they are starving. It won't last much longer.
4. Sir Ken Robinson died in August. I was a great fan. Watching this talk always brings me back to my student days, when I still had dreams of changing the way children are educated - something I soon realised as utopian on a grand scale. Anyway, listening to him still makes me a tiny bit hopeful.
5. I had to agree have been told to reduce my home office work and, after this holiday, will have to go back working on campus for two days a week. My GP is not amused. In theory, there is a strict hygiene protocol incl. airing the room every 30 mins which I can just see happening in the winter months. Not.
6. I leave this here for general perusal (for source click here). When I am in my office, I'll be in the yellow. But currently, only 40 cases in my city.
Risk
of SARS-CoV-2 transmission from asymptomatic people in different
settings and for different occupation times, venting, and crowding
levels (ignoring variation in susceptibility and viral shedding rates).
Face covering refers to those for the general population and not high
grade respirators. The grades are indicative of qualitative relative
risk and do not represent a quantitative measure. Other factors not
presented in these tables may also need to be taken into account when
considering transmission risk, including viral load of an infected
person and people’s susceptibility to infection. Coughing or sneezing,
even if these are due to irritation or allergies while asymptomatic,
would exacerbate risk of exposure across an indoor space, regardless of
ventilation.
7. We are in for another heat wave, apparently.
8. This week's music is in memory of R's parents, who taught this to my daughter one day driving back from the beach.
21 August 2020
For the last couple of weeks I have been trying out a new approach. It sort of works surprisingly well and I am quite pleased with it.
Step one: Apply the basic principle of life and death. Or rather life vs death.
It boils down to a quick analysis: Will I make it through the day? And if under the circumstances it seems that I do - and this is obviously so - I'll just chuck out whatever it is that bothered me. Away with it, not worth dwelling on it.
Step two: Discover the basic underlying pattern in your life and if there is none - which is what seems to be the case most of the time. Honestly, the chaos! - make one up as you go along. Divide the day into periods of food intake, dental hygiene, laundry folding, cryptic crossword solving, paid employment, a chapter of whatever book comes in handy, coffee intake, meditation (sort of), fresh air exposure, conversations with other humans, watching R cook dinner and drug taking (purely pharmaceutical).
Step three: If all fails, go online. Or read a book. Or both.
This is the lake we did not swim in despite careful planning. Pandemically speaking. We did make online reservations for a socially distanced slot - four hours - to access the nature reserve that then allows you to get to the water safely. Alas, thunderstorms. Force something or other winds and flooded roads. We stayed home.
This is a maar, a very deep volcanic crater and the water is clear, cold and black. There are many of these maars in our part of the world, we are surrounded by volcanoes and hills that were formed by eruptions. Some of the lakes send up gas bubbles, so-called mofettes, warning us that there is activity, always. Volcanoes are never dormant.
In my healthy days, I swam across and back, it's about 1.5 km in total, several times.
Five decades ago, at the end of July, I am living at home with my
parents and my big sister and my younger brother. My father has given me
the task of reading the map and navigating him on the long journey to our
holiday home on the coast in Denmark. This means that I can sit next to him in the
passenger seat and not get carsick in the back. I love reading maps. I
love school, I play the piano, I sing in a choir and I am so much
looking forward to our seaside holiday where I can read all the books I
packed. My parents are making jokes about how many.
Four
decades ago, at the end of July, I am living with R in a tiny attic
flat in Heidelberg and I have just decided to drop out of university
with four months to go to my final exams. I know I never want to teach,
research or lecture, instead I am working at the hospital, mostly
mopping floors and sterilising bits and pieces. R is working for a
landscape gardener. In the evenings, we sit by the river making plans
about cycling all the way to Ireland. My parents stop talking to me.
Three
decades ago, at the end of July, I am living in a small bungalow with a
corrugated tin roof in a tropical African country. I am married to R
who is teaching chemistry and biology at the capital's polytechnic, our
seven year old daughter is climbing trees and diving for crabs. My job
as a business manager at a government training scheme has just come to
an end and I am giving away/selling our things. In a few days we will
move on to spend some time in India. Back in Germany, after my mother's
latest suicide attempt, my father is preparing to run away in the middle
of the night, he will be in hiding for several months.
Two
decades ago, at the end of July, I am living in Germany again. We have
just bought a house very similar to the one I grew up in, R is teaching
and our daughter is preparing to move on to study and be an adult. I
have just started my new job at the university medical faculty
and at the obligatory health check-up for newcomers my blood works have
come back with troubling results. I decide to ignore this and instead
get ready for a three week long bike trip across Germany with R. My
mother is dead, my father rejoicing, now that I am finally where he
feels I belong, in Germany and at a university.
One
decade ago, at the end of July, I am mostly at home resting in our
house and garden. R is still teaching. Our daughter, after years of
study, travel and work on several continents, is beginning to settle
down on the other side of the planet. By now, I have been out sick for
11 months and I am in no shape yet to go back to work. I am beginning to
accept the reality of a livelong chronic illness. I buy an ebike and
slowly begin cycling again, first minutes and hours, then a morning, a
day, and eventually, after another year, a whole week. I have started to
blog. My father is refusing to understand chronic, but tries to be
helpful.
Today, at the end of July, I am still
living with R in this house near the river. I am still working at the university, but
part time and since mid March, from home during this strange pandemic. R is a
retired teacher and a busy gardener. Our daughter is living with her
small family on the other side of the planet and the pandemic has cut a
big gash through all our plans and dreams. I am a virtual grandmother, my
grandchild sings with me via social media. I cycle along the river. My
father is in a retirement home. He is unwell and angry.
I
blog. Some nights I sleep poorly. I am comfortably resigned. My energy is limited, I
am not much in pain. I could miss a lot. I could complain, I could
shout at the moon.
I read maps, there are places I think I still want, I still need to go to.
"Putting something called Nature on a pedestal and admiring it from afar
does for the environment what patriarchy does for the figure of Woman.
It is a paradoxical act of sadistic admiration."
". . . the belief that humanity will soon
become involved in a deep and abiding worldwide partnership with nature.
Millions of us will commit ourselves to reversing the long legacy of
environmental degradation that threatens to destabilize the climate as
well as the great ecologies that sustain life on Earth. We must develop a
vast stewardship initiative, which will become the great work of our
time. Fortunately, there are as many ways to serve the Earth as there
are people willing to engage in this vast restoration project. It
includes nothing less than stabilizing the planet’s climate as well as
saving ourselves."
We could if we wanted to. But, ahh, distraction, distraction. Two days ago, I got sidetracked while I was searching online for a specific white cotton vest for my father and before I knew it, I was contemplating purchasing various underwear items I did not need to restock. I refrained, because: size charts, how do they work? Since then, this link keeps popping up to a site listing "the 10 female clothing items men hate". I am not even tempted, what do I care. As a form of interweb punishment I have since received an invitation, I kid you not, to view bargain funeral cars. There could be a message here.
So there I was early, very early one morning, long before day break and even earlier than the birds, too exhausted to go back to sleep. The woman from the corner house, the painter who howls at the moon, had just shattered another glass bottle onto her driveway, throwing it out of her upstairs bathroom window with many curse words and threats. She is not boozing, several time that night it was empty water bottles she threw out, an expensive French brand, volcanic source, with a 1 Euro refund per bottle.
I lay there contemplating again if I should do something, go over and ring her door bell and offer my help and risk getting a bottle whacked over my head. Once again, I reprimanded myself for not having done that weeks ago, before she started with the throwing of glass and china and that walking over there in the dark would be tricky what with all the shards on her garden path. And then I started worrying whether I should wear a mask or not and well, I fell asleep again, dreaming of my mother.
The way she would climb onto the upstairs window ledge threatening to jump because we didn't tidy up our room.
In the morning, I wrote an email to the social psychiatric helpline about the scenario, bottles and howling and cursing and please, please, no police, and ended it with asking for a call back. Then I tried to delete the email but too late.
An hour later, someone called me, one of these firm female voices, professionally emphatic, and we had a decent enough talk and she took down notes and described the possible steps, i.e. a letter offering help, followed by a house call, no pressure, all voluntarily, but possibly not until sometime in August and that we should only consider calling the cops if she keeps it up with the bottle throwing and noise disruption at night and while I tried to frantically pedal back explaining that there was a lot more noise from neighbours revving their expensive cars and leaf blowers and hedge cutters and that it was her safety I was concerned for, the police arrived. I almost started to cry but it turns out, another neighbour was responsible for that and she never opened her door and stayed quiet as a mouse. In fairness, the professionally emphatic female on the phone seemed to get my point and we exchanged numbers and decided to keep an eye on things. Whatever that implies.
Why do I do stuff like that? That woman did not have the time of day for me in all the years we lived here and I have one bad dream about my mother and cannot keep my mouth shut.
In other news, I am officially on holidays. In fact, while busily working from home since mid March, due to pandemic measures, I have lost touch of my holiday entitlement and now must take at least one week every month until the end of the year or else. Also, I was informed by HR that since the beginning of my pandemic related home office confinement I have worked far more than my contract hours and must stop doing that as home office and overtime are mutually exclusive concepts. I reacted by collapsing into a deep semi coma of exhaustion and have now told R that I intend to sleep for the next three days. At least. Seriously.
The video above is the free entertainment laid on for us on the patio. The one below is music for a Friday.
10 July 2020
Surprise, July so far has been cool and wet. Cool-ish and wet-ish. We are holding it together at the fort here, plenty of gardening and housekeeping and home office to bring in the dough.
I sort of lost it for a bit after I read about the risks to airline travel regardless of whatever air filter system gadgets and seat spacing. One of the eminent virologists told a reporter that he would only go on an airplane at a push and then wearing a protective suit and those super duper masks and for the life of me, I cannot see myself on a 33 hrs trip geared up that way, never mind the stop overs. Maybe on a couple of cargo ships? And I read the bit about mild cases who after a speedy recovery have developed neurological symptoms (tremors, balance loss, encephalitis, more here) and then the findings of how the virus attacks heart cells (more here).
Before that, I was skipping about asking people to dig deep into their creative thoughts and to come up with positive stuff and no more hankering after our has-been normal life and moaning about what we cannot change. Acceptance, I shouted with a smile. Should have known I was way over the top.
This is something that happens to other people in other times; something you might imagine, might read about – not experience. But it is real, it is happening. The plague is back. It never went away. Welcome to the future. No, welcome to the present, to the reality of
an ineradicable highly contagious and sometimes fatal virus. There might be a vaccine for it at some stage, as there is for measles. There might not be, as there is not for HIV. A reliable treatment might be developed, as there is for HIV. Or it might not be, like measles.
In any event, there is a gap between what we know about our situation
and what our gut believes, a gap that creates confusion, promotes
outrage over inconveniences, complacency after early successes. We “know” what’s happening, but we don’t quite “feel” it. Our
collective gut is still telling us normality is just around the corner. The reality has been slow to sink in because it’s beyond our privileged experience.
As you will yourself into the reality you perhaps start to understand
how the millions before you didn’t understand either, didn’t read the
signs, didn’t grasp calamity unfolding, were unprepared, were lost in
history’s turmoil, thought their mass grave impossible even as they dug
it. We’re out of practice. Mass disasters don’t happen here, not in our lifetime. The plagues and total wars and famines and deaths in the thousands
and millions are confined to television screens. Even our hard times
remain relatively soft in the broader, longer scheme of things. Other people’s individual tragedies have gone on regardless. In
groups sometimes, in planeloads. Communities when fire or flood or
landslide tear through. Bad, terrible, but this, this indiscriminate imposition … on everyone? And slowly the comprehension comes – it has always been everyone.
The single diagnosis and mass verdict, the individual execution and the genocide: Each one, one person, however many. One person facing mortality. We’re born to this. We will get used to it. Adapting is what we do best.
Today, Friday, music day, I have the same song in two versions. There is a third version, which is the one I have been singing to my myself all day. To the extent that R has politely asked me to cut it out.
And at the end of the week I am also tired. So just some pictures of and from the garden. The raspberry harvest is massive, the freezer is packed, R is making jam and clafoutis.
The blackcurrants are already soaking in gin.
The onions are now drying in the wood shed
and that patch of wildflower is the square experiment, I insisted on leaving a section of the lawn go wild and with a little help from a seed packet, this is what happened. Apart from the poppy, there are eight other different flowering plants - so far.
The grapes ripen while we watch,
the lilies are just lilies
and the feijoa tree is somewhat camera shy, but it is simply loaded with blossoms and every morning buzzing with bumble bees, giving us hope of some fruit eventually.
"So often these days, every living thing
seems overwhelmingly tender and fragile to me. I can feel angry at the
stupidity of those joining crowds and rejecting personal and community
protection, but more often, I cry that people are so anxious they’re
willing to deny reality. I hear them laughing together on the trail and
wonder if they’re robbing themselves of laughing together in a few
weeks, or months. Next summer. Ever."
The
rambling rose is still flowering like there is no tomorrow. The peonies
are rushing it, out in full force at sunrise and spent by dinner time.
The lilies are beginning their show and cosmos, well, I don't remember
cosmos blossoms in May. But there they are. Maybe I am overreacting and
this is just the way things go. A friend from Berlin sends me pictures
of racoons climbing onto her 3rd floow balcony, eating the left over
crumbs from her breakfast. Here, we wake early to the shreeking of
parakeets.
It's a wild world out there.
I
am still waiting for the results from last week's botched coloscopy. My
shit is no longer blue, took three days to get the dye out of my
system. Mostly, I am too tired to get worked up about it. My bet, it's
probably just nothing.
My father is leaving short
cryptic messages on the answerphone in case the results are not good so
he doesn't have to hear anything upsetting in person and lose his shit
live.
Anyway, he has decided to fully embrace the
easing of the lockdown by inviting his various female companions to
lunch. One after the other, mind you. It sounds more flamboyant than it
actually is. He just wants company while he eats.
We
are watching films and episodes of series and I usually fall asleep
half way through. R is not very good at recaps, let me tell you. I know
we watched Canadian crime and Danish family drama, also a rather good
road movie about a rich kid picking up a refugee in his stepfather's
camper van (stolen) and both ending up in Calais. But other than that,
it's a jumble.
I have attempted,
with some success, to cycle a 10 km round trip along the river every
evening. Except for one day when I fell asleep beforehand. I think that
happened yesterday.
Friday's music is called Tiliboyo (sunset) and was composed by Foday Suso from Gambia. Played here by the Kronos Quartet. Their album Pieces of Africa is one my all time favourites.
What should have been just another routine medical appointment turned into a rather lengthy painful procedure involving barfing all over the place and full anesthetics and sleeping it off at home - thankfully. Results in a week or so.
We had about seven drops of rain today. The sum total since I cannot remember when. This is the summer we need to seriously consider gardening in a changed climate. Daily watering is not an option. The rambling rose, however, is coping well. Even on a muggy day.
Words for our time:
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.
Flannery O'Connor
The most prominent and most frightening aspect of the escape from reality (. . . ) lies in the attitude to dealing with facts as if they were opinions.
Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.
Twice a week, I sit down and listen to our country's favourite virologist's podcast. He is a scientist by the book, someone who gets excited over a recent study regardless of the findings but because it was done carefully and with a high level of significance and proper statistics etc.
He tries - and succeeds - to explain the whole shitshow of media frenzy and panic stations and political scare mongering in rational, reasoned and factual words.
Our current national situation is, getting there. As long as we can keep the reproduction number (or R value) below 1 and preferably at around 0.75, we can handle the time to vaccine without overcrowding our medical services, using the hammer and dance approach, and in view of promising treatment strategies for those who get a bad case, keep the death rate minimal.
The way I understand it:
1. The reproduction number, calculated daily by the national public health institute, indicates how many people one person with the virus can infect. If
the rate is equal to 1, it means that one person is infecting another,
on average. We are currently hovering at or below 1, which is why a couple of social distancing measures have been relaxed. Should it climb and with it the number of new cases per 10,000 people in a district, we have to run for cover again. We are all becoming experts at numbers here.
2. Time to vaccine is - despite all the negative media headlines - estimated to be 18 months or thereabout, in other words, sometime before winter 2021. It take this from the virologist's mouth and I tend to trust him and his colleagues somewhat more than Tom, Dick or Harry on social media, regardless of how much expert knowledge they have gained from google university. 3. Read about the hammer and dance approach here.
4. Promising treatment strategies are being researched in almost all science labs worldwide. I have great faith in this.
When In first heard this music, as part of a documentary on concentration camps in Poland, several years ago, I felt crushed, burdened, stunned, obviously. This history will never leave us and so it should be. I was born into this history and I have no time for forgive and forget.
I know I am not alone with that thought. There must not be an end to remembering. Our shame would be not remembering.
This is the second movement of Henryk Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. The lyrics are a prayer inscribed on a cell wall in a gestapo headquarters in Poland by a young woman in 1944. It is the Zdrowas Mario, or Ave Maria: No, Mother, do not weep.
Seventy-five years ago, WWII ended. For a long time I felt relieved that both my parents had been too young to join the army, that my father was a schoolboy and my mother, well we don't really know, but not in uniform. She struggled all her adult life with demons and memories, and we struggled with her not knowing what that shadow was that hung over all of us.
Back in early January of this year when we thought life would just
meander on the way we expected, I decided that this year we would go and
visit all accessible memorial places and historic monuments on the nazi
terror. This had been on my mind for years. I must admit that I had
avoided this issue for too long but after we visited Dachau a few years
ago, I realised that while it was really hard to do, I need to continue.
This is not something I can explain very well and R, bless his Irish
historically neutral soul, tags along to hold my hand. So. We got out a
map and circled areas and made lists and I downloaded all the visitors'
information from the various sites and that was that.
But eventually.
01 May 2020
Friday. Music. Isn't she lovely here.
The garden is all purple and pink. I should take pictures. Apple and pear trees are so crammed with fruit we may need to do a bit of thinning out. But the plums and peaches are poorly, could be a virus. Raspberries full of bees right now, enough rhubarb for a decent crumble tomorrow.
Ate my first strawberry and still harvesting lemons in the greenhouse.
Three days ago I was informed that due to the fact that I am, and the official term here is, high risk vulnerable individual, I am to stay away from campus for the foreseeable future. Life goes on but not as we knew it.
24 April 2020
Simply lit
Often toward evening,
after another day, after
another year of days,
in the half dark on the way home
I stop at the food store
and waiting in line I begin
to wonder about people—I wonder
if they also wonder about how
strange it is that we
are here on the earth.
And how in order to live
we all must sleep.
And how we have beds for this
(unless we are without)
and entire rooms where we go
at the end of the day to collapse.
And I think how even the most
lively people are desolate
when they are alone
because they too must sleep
and sooner or later die.
We are always looking to acquire
more food for more great meals.
We have to have great meals.
Isn't it enough to be a person buying
a carton of milk? A simple
package of butter and a loaf
of whole wheat bread?
Isn't it enough to stand here
while the sweet middle-aged cashier
rings up the purchases?
I look outside,
but I can't see much out there
because now it is dark except
for a single vermilion neon sign
floating above the gas station
like a miniature temple simply lit
against the night.
One of the friends who so generously go shopping for us told me that her children are eating so much more, too much, she says, now that they are locked down. But what can I tell them, she asks, cut the sugar while there's a virus?
Another friend tells me how her two teenage daughters are trying so hard to be calm und understanding she wonders if they'll explode one day. I wish they would go back to arguing and banging the doors.
Yesterday just before sunset, I started to clean windows, splashing and wiping, whistling my confusion through my teeth. It was dark by the time I was done with it all.
My father asks that we stop calling him every day, as if there's an emergency, he complains. Just stop being so emotional about everything, he admonishes me before I can say a word and puts down the phone. I know all the things he is afraid of and hospitals are on the top of his list.
When R was a college student, his mother had a car accident as a result of which she had to spend six months in traction, that means six months on your back looking at the ceiling, not knowing whether she could walk again.
I first thought someone was telling me a very bad joke when I first found out, years later, during my first winter in Dublin. It had snowed and she was outside with a gang of kids and dogs throwing snowballs.
So, you see, I know we can do this. Nice and steady.
(Fun fact: the above sequence of the filming of the concert had to be edited as there was a visible blob of cocain dripping out of NY's nose - I have it from a good source.)
"How excellent that our arrogant species receives this collective
slap-in-the-face reality check, waking us two-leggeds up to the simple
truth that we are not at all in control, have never really been in
control, that we live at the behest of powers—of a complex interplay
of powers—far beyond our ability to fully fathom, to predict, or to
steer. What hubris to have imagined we could do whatever we want with
this exquisitely interwoven wonder of a world! And yet how awful that
this lesson must come at the expense of so many unsuspecting human
lives, so many innocent souls now shivering with fever and fright as
they struggle to draw breath.
We’re finally being forced to recognize that
no top-down institution, governmental or otherwise, can fully ensure our
safety. That our deepest insurance against disaster is going local—by
getting to know our actual neighbors and checking in on one another when
we can, participating in our local community and apprenticing with the
more-than-human terrain that surrounds and sustains us."
In the late 18th century, Matthias Claudius (poet) wrote the Abendlied (evening song), a hugely popular poem to this day. A couple of years later, a composer of popular ditties at the time, Johann Peter Schulz, set it to music and this tune is part of our national DNA so to speak. It goes on a bit, seven verses.
Last week, the RIAS chamber choir from Berlin met for a physical distancing recording of verses 1-3 and 7 to warm our hearts.
There are many English translations of the lyrics, I just picked this one at random.
The moon is risen, beaming,
The golden stars are gleaming
So brightly in the skies;
The hushed, black woods are dreaming,
The mists, like phantoms seeming,
From meadows magically rise.
How still the world reposes,
While twilight round it closes,
So peaceful and so fair!
A quiet room for sleeping,
Into oblivion steeping
The day's distress and sober care.
Look at the moon so lonely!
One half is shining only,
Yet she is round and bright;
Thus oft we laugh unknowing
At things that are not showing,
That still are hidden from our sight.
Lie down, my friends, reposing,
Your eyes in God's name closing.
How cold the night-wind blew!
Oh God, Thine anger keeping,
Now grant us peaceful sleeping,
And our sick neighbor too.
So much for music on a Friday. (RIAS btw stands for Radio in the American Sector, one of Berlin's radio and tv stations during the cold war, discontinued obviously, but the choir continues to this day).
Who would have thought that working entirely from home can be so tiring. I had been dreaming of a scenario like this as a super good thing for years and now?
I fly through the first two hours in my PJs with the bowl of cold porridge and the pot of tea for company before I take the shower-and-back-exercise-and-getting-dressed-properly break and let me tell you, it's all downhill after that. I am doling out the stuff and keep track of it all but, whoa, it's a struggle.
And we all know (because we are realistic and grown ups, aren't we) that this will go on for a bit.
Anyway, this is only the first week, there is room for improvement.
The garden is coming along gloriously, not just with all the fruit trees in flower and tulips lined up in colourfull formation, but also because R is there on his knees hour after hour fine tuning the weeding and replanting and literally carving out neat corners. It's Kew Gardens standards, honestly. Every so often, we cram into the greenhouse to get high on the flowering lemon trees and to nip the fresh spinach leaves and dig up a crunchy radish or two.
I could go on in this chatty vein but no matter what, there's this serious dark heavy stuff sitting on my chest. I try to compare it to the weeks and months after Chernobyl but that time was infinitely more dangerous and we were utterly helpless. Which is not the case now. And when I get as far as this in my thoughts, I feel almost stupid. First world impatience etc.
Because what do I have to complain about? I can't go out and shop. But, but, but. I never do that anyway. I can't go out and meet friends. But instead, tons of friends and others have been in touch one way or another, much more than ever. The larder is stacked. We even have fresh asparagus.
Basically, the only thing I could complain about is that our comfortable life is currently somewhat repetitive and that the seaside is an awful long and, let's agree on that, impossible drive away.
When people say "this has never happened to our country before" I want
to say, "yes it has." Indigenous people suffered wave after wave of
European borne epidemic diseases, which killed 9 of every 10 people.
The trauma continued through the Flu of 1918 and the scourge of
tuberculosis. When treaties were made it was thought that Native people
were going to vanish, but no. We are still here.
Also:
Unhealthy anticipatory grief is really anxiety, and that’s the
feeling you’re talking about. Our mind begins to show us images. My
parents getting sick. We see the worst scenarios. That’s our minds being
protective. Our goal is not to ignore those images or to try to make
them go away — your mind won’t let you do that and it can be painful to
try and force it. The goal is to find balance in the things you’re thinking.
If you feel the worst image taking shape, make yourself think of the
best image. We all get a little sick and the world continues. Not
everyone I love dies. Maybe no one does because we’re all taking the
right steps. Neither scenario should be ignored but neither should
dominate either.
Anticipatory grief is the mind going to the future and imagining the worst. To calm yourself, you want to come into the present. (. . .)
You can name five things in the room. There’s a computer, a chair, a
picture of the dog, an old rug, and a coffee mug. It’s that simple.
Breathe. Realize that in the present moment, nothing you’ve anticipated
has happened. In this moment, you’re okay. You have food. You are not
sick. Use your senses and think about what they feel. The desk is hard.
The blanket is soft. I can feel the breath coming into my nose. This
really will work to dampen some of that pain.
You can also think about how to let go of what you can’t control.
What your neighbor is doing is out of your control. What is in your
control is staying six feet away from them and washing your hands. Focus
on that.
Finally, it’s a good time to stock up on compassion.
Everyone will have different levels of fear and grief and it manifests
in different ways. (. . .) be patient. Think about who someone usually is and not who they seem to be in this moment.
For what it's worth, I have tried and failed. There was a bit of tsk tsk tsking yesterday when I finally sat down in front of my GP but we both had a moment of hilarity when I eventually got up again, waving my latest sickness certificate (which allows me to stay home until Wednesday). It was her mentioning work life balance that made me smile at first and when I told her how my boss had responded to my calling in sick (how much can you work from home?) we both laughed out loud.
For lack of energy and also because I am somewhat deranged in my mental capacities (hello vertigo), this is a short post. But here's a bit of music from Italy - after all, it's Friday, music day.
Lascia che torni il vento
E con il vento la tempesta
E fa che non sia per sempre
Questo tempo che ci resta
(Let the wind return And with the wind the storm And let it not be forever This time we have left)
31 January 2020
Not that I miss it, but it feels odd to finish off January without that winter feeling. If anything, we had maybe a night or two of minimal frost, not a single snow flake and all the sounds and sights of spring. It's not over yet and February can be a real monster. I'd like to think that all this is just a quirky year but well, you know all the science and the patterns and the big picture stuff.
So for a little while, I shall enjoy that we have no winter this year. And I admit that I like it, that I've always dreaded winter and if I had magic powers, would do away with it once and for all.
Anyway, Friday it is, music day (thank you Robin) and this week it's F, so here are the Fleet Foxes singing about winter.
This morning on the radio, some clever person warned us to wrap up well because of arctic wind. I did that - only the wind was blowing - icy cold admittedly - from the south, and we know the difference between the arctic (north, polar bears) and the antarctic (south, penguins) but let's not be a stickler for details.
So I cycled my cold and weary body against the arctic wind to the osteopath and after I had unwrapped several layers of scarves and sweaters and mittens and hoodies, let her do her stuff, all the proper hands-on kneading and shifting and never mind the mumbo jumbo kinesiology and pendulum chakra incense whatever. It was warm and cosy and generally, I find that osteopath rooms smell very nice, they use some kind of woody linseedy oil. Anyway, when I left the hushed sanctum, the wind had gotten stronger but was pushing me now along the river and there was birdsong, somewhere. It came as a sudden insight, flushing me with all its glory, that at least the weather is going to get better, the days are getting longer, birds will be nesting and leaves will sprout on trees and so on.
Wonderful news. And obviously, I had to sing at the top of my voice.
It's Friday, here's my music for the letter E for Edie Brickell.
All I know about this song is that it came with windows 95, seriously. I remember, when we stood there and listened and thought, computers now have theme songs? Littel did we know etc.
All I know of Edie Brickell is that song and that she is Paul Simon's wife. Or has been, I don't know.
. . . and do go to hear Robin's Friday music choice, because this is all her idea.
Friday it is. And as I am a great fan of Robin, I will again tag along with her fabulous idea of music on a Friday.
And because I am somewhat afflicted by patterns and lists and order in my life, I am doing this alphabetically by first letter of the first name.
This is week D and well, obviously, there has to be David Bowie. I could write a long essay here, how David Bowie came into my live when I was a dreadfully lost and bored teenager on school exchange in Grimsby (a town as grim as the name implies), how my stealing glittery blue eye shadow in Woolworth still burdens my conscience some 40 something years later and yet, how the memory still cheers me on a rainy day. Painting my eye lids blue (and refusing to wash it off with the result that I was expelled from school) may for some be nothing more than pointless cosmetics in poor taste, but for me, on that day, it was a thrilling act of rebellion.
