Day 1, week whatever. I am not myself.
Why Day 1 when awareness of COVID-19 has been with us for months?
Is it the snow falling, a post-spring-equinox reminder that seasonal change is fluid?
Is is a revelatory moment, just a day ago, a corner turned in my understanding of the hoarding mentality sweeping over us? Reason had me in the mindset of health—the no-need-to-panic mode of someone who says to herself, two weeks from now I’ll just go out for more paper towels, or chicken, or coffee.
Today, reason has me seeing people stocking up not so much out of fear that stores will run out of what they need but the more dire fear that the new corona will get them. And they won’t be able to go out.
Maybe there’s a middle ground where both fears meet.
Why Day 1, week whatever?
Why am I not myself?
For someone who works from home, and a writer to boot, daily life is not all that different in these times of social distancing. And, yet, hard-wired as I am to routines, days underscored by the corona pandemic have me feeling at sea. Not quite myself. Walking around like a chicken without a head.
As long as I can get out for a walk, meditate, do yoga, read, drink coffee in the morning and wine in the evening, I get by.
As long I get a text or phone call from my daughter, in Los Angeles, I can sharpen my focus, put the head back on the chicken.
Maybe even write.
Why Day 1, week whatever?
Maybe a revelatory moment, a defining one, that locates me in a very particular time and place. Or maybe it’s that these chicken-without-a-head days feel more like a circular loop of time, no beginning or ending—until something brings each of us to a starting point that makes personal sense.
We watch and listen, wait and hope for a marked point out of the circular loop of time to a place where a flattened COVID-19 curve portends the ending—not to be confused with the end—of days marked by confusion, despair, anger, fear.
We take solace in the little things, and the big ones, that make us smile, even laugh.
We temper the greedy, insensitive modes of survival with the generous spirit of true, collective survival. I like to think that social distancing is making us more gracious on social media. And even if it isn’t, it’s making us more present to the collective consciousness we share.
So, as we muddle our way through the best and worst of times a novel corona virus has given rise to, a rekindled sense of purpose, coupled with the ever-present need to make sense of things, brings more immediacy to my blogging self.
All of which has me thinking, from inside that chicken head of mine, of all the ways collective stories take shape.
All of which has me hoping, from that former, steadier self of mine, that blogging is a way of inviting readers to share, via comments, where we are/how we feel/what we need to get through the best and worst of times.
In the beginning there was light. And, there was the word.
