I don't really have a strong inclination to write today other than I just visited the websites of two of my favorite writers and homegirls in my head - dream hampton and Rebecca Walker - but I felt that I did need to write something seeing as I haven't written much this new year. I also felt compelled to share a little about this Coronavirus bullshit that has everyone on edge. I am reluctant to brush it off as anything less than serious, but serious doesn't mean core-shaking; yet here we are shaking at the very core of our collective being. Maybe I have reconciled myself with the reality that we will all get sick at some point and we will all surely die eventually, but I have a bit of fearlessness roiling in my bones. "Wash your hands and be mindful of of your actions", I remind myself. "Don't stare mercilessly at people who cough on the train; you've seen worse", I admonish when tempted to join in on the useless act of non-physical social distancing. I am human and part of that experience is being compassionate. There but for the grace of God go I... coughing and sniffling. A month ago that was me on the train. Pitiful. But virus free. Yet my human reality makes me Lysol my surrounding profusely, and my hands... my hands are rough like cheap toilet paper. Single-ply, greyish white. Truth be told, I am over this panic and yet I am drawn to the news outlets just to get the latest toll and death count. The morbidity should affect me and yet it doesn't. At least not in the way that it does my colleagues. They are in reactionary mode, but come to think of it, when are they not? Goddamnit! The fear of it all angers me and baffles me at the same time. You can only ward off the inevitable for so long and yet humans waste life times doing just that. We don't want to age, face fears, or swallow risks whole, and yet we want the reward of a full and brave life. I think of the meme of the little girl carelessly licking a handrail, as if to say "fuck you!" to any bodily dangers. It amazes me that kids are oblivious to danger and death but fear the imaginary specter hiding in a dark closet. Adults no longer fear the dark spaces in our line of sight, but rather those that lurk in the recesses of our knowledge. We know that we were born dying, but we are so far removed from life outside the physical that we can't remember what it feels like to be pure energy. Funny how we hold tightly to things that were never meant to be ours for the long haul. Again, I don't take the threat of a pandemic lightly, but I refuse to cloak myself in the darkness of worry. It's all an illusion anyway.
This morning I dreamed that I lost my luggage and passport at an airport hotel. The hotel was awash with people and had the faux lux feel of a Mississippi casino presidential suite replete with an unlimited crab leg buffet. I felt physically frantic about losing these things and working through throngs of uninterested bystanders. People in my way... obscuring my view...slowing me down. Despite my very real heart palpitations and uneasiness, at some point during this dream, I said to myself "This is a dream. None of what you are experiencing is real"...yet I kept looking for this luggage, convinced that someone had plotted to trap me there. I'd no clue where I was headed but I just knew that in this moment, in this place, I felt fear. Fear that was both real and unreal.
I suppose we are simply looking for our luggage. The thing that makes us feel safe and in control even when we aren't.
I've gotten a lot of questions about my plans to travel during this time of heightened awareness, and people oddly seem to get it when I tell them that I am going forward with my travel plans. What I don't say and what is possibly understood is that no person knows the day or the time; so why would I sit around waiting on it? Life is so full of wonder and amazement, and I feel compelled by a sense of divine purpose to go out and roll around in it all. It is my duty to live. Sometimes that means leaving the lost luggage and forging ahead without it.
I have found that more than anything this "scare"is making me reconsider the more important things in my life, like spending more time loving my aging dogs. They are here but a moment and my love means the world to them. I want to focus on that. Also as a person with underlying health challenges, I have been more purposeful about eating well. Not just healthy but well. Food is an experience. A joy. A form of love. I am loving myself a bit more. And to be honest I feel like that is why I am not panicking in this age of worry. I am choosing love. My self preservation doesn't make room for panic. Just a conscious decision to practice love in a very real way. I am not alone in this. The ways in which people are considering the health of others shows glimmers of hope that love can prevail even against this plague of presumption. I can't imagine sending my loved one's away from my presence because I myself was contagious. The kind of interpersonal love that I have experienced makes me crave the communion, and yet love is being alone in this case. But at any rate, maybe it makes the person pull closer to themselves... again love. Seems trivial but I remember during a heated discussion many years ago, I boldly declared that it was not nor has it ever been naive to believe that love is the cure for everything. It is; it just shows up in many different ways. So many that we can't really make sense of it. Maybe we shouldn't try to rationalize the irrational.
Irrational.
In many ways, I feel on a visceral level that all of this is irrational... inexpressible in the ordinary. These are not ordinary times and yet we keep looking for ordinary ways forward. Ordinary not in the sense of being unremarkable, but trite. There is a trite quality to panic and reacting with fear. What if we were bold and brave? What if I just washed my hands a little more or broke a few arbitrary rules to create more... more space in the conclave of social decorum? Instead of telling people how to be, allow them to be their best selves appropriate for this very moment. Now I am getting philosophical, but I hope that you follow. At any rate, viruses are serious business but I've never known panic to be the cure for anything, let alone upper respiratory infections that we know very little about. It didn't help me to find that luggage and it wont help us move forward in this emerging new normal.
Calm down
Breathe intenion
Love
and wash your nasty ass hands!
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