Goddard Park, the last time I was there before it closed.
Hidden talents as revealed by COVID-19 seclusion so far:
Focaccia maker (with the last known packet of Fleischmann’s in the Western world)
Grocery launderer
Gabriel hair cutter and stylist (turns out I’m an ace barber—who knew?)
Sleeping cat annoyer
This seclusion has been very revealing of everything, including the light-hearted, but more often it shows the fears and anxieties that growl there in the background. I used to grind my teeth every night, long before the virus, though years of meditation and body awareness have helped with this more than I can say; but I woke from a quick nap yesterday with my jaw clenched tight.
Nameless, shapeless anxieties have become re-articulated in the tendons of my back. I noticed this when I was in the kitchen this morning, but this noticing is helpful—the most effective thing, I think, to do with all the feelings and sensations passing through. Maybe the most fundamental skill is to learn to witness, to allow judgment to cool down, to be easier with not-knowing and uncertainty. Bare observation is evidence of that lovely paradox that shows up in the territory between our minds and pure beingness—you accomplish something by doing nothing. Except watch.
But speaking of doing, simple witnessing isn’t by any means easy to accomplish. I don’t always have the knack, and these are unprecedented times (not unprecedented in terms of horror, but in the way of the specifics; I think we can all agree that, in general, human atrocity is perfectly predictable). Things and attitudes change daily. The entire globe is now connected in this intricate net of sickness, anxiety and (maybe) hope. New York City, beloved by so many, is roiling in a fear so palpable that it’s felt everywhere, and each day of seclusion, regardless of where you are, is a rocking between catastrophic thinking and perhaps moments of peace or the ability to witness. I have found it’s a uniquely bizarre experience, for instance, to wash a load of groceries in the kitchen sink like so many babies, but on the other hand there is food, plus soap and clean water. My husband puts his arms up toward the ceiling every day and says, “We’re alive!” and then I do this, too, and we start laughing, not because any of this is at all funny but because it’s an entirely human thing to do, especially to ward off suffering. There have been many moments when I’ve teared up or been frozen with anxiety. “We have to be grateful,” says the mechanical engineer whose scientific mind is often the counter to my literary one, but lately he is philosophical. Gratitude is the best antidote, true enough.
The parks and beaches here in Rhode Island are now closed, which is a necessary measure, but a blow to people with disabilities (and their caregivers) who need a safe place to go to be outside. Gabriel’s world gets (inexplicably, to him) smaller and smaller, though he seems to be adjusting now. Music, as ever, is the saviour, as it has been for so many years for him (us). The accessibility of vast cathedrals of jazz, big band, funk, classical, and opera is a brilliant light in this whole business; it feels like a miracle, actually, to download lists of tunes, and to hear the intricate and soaring record of musicians’ personal suffering and hope—what is jazz if not the most ingenious telling of profound hardship made wholly listenable? I think the lesson here is that the suffering isn’t repressed or shoved aside or falsely turned into a positive, but rather paid attention to—witnessed. And allowed to sing.