| The first step to take is to become aware that love is art, just as living is an art; if you want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering. – Eric Fromm |
Over the past few weeks, some of us have developed a “pandemic personality” having to jam full lives into the cramped bubble of our apartment or house. We are found muttering passive-aggressive rhetorical questions under our breath: ”What kind of person leaves a vacuum cleaner in the middle of the kitchen?” “Who sprays bleach on a mirror?” “Does a frying pan really need to soak for three days?” “Why are you soaping down the dog every time you go for a walk?” |
Hoods, Headspaces and Heartspaces
Some of us are ecstatic that we get to spend so much time together, then miserable because we’re deciding to divorce, then ecstatic that we’re going to divorce.
Cause no one signed up for a marriage where you have to rely on your spouse for bloody everything.
Life Between Lattes
Now add children:
On video call to boss.
Boss: “I need you to…”
(4 kids run by: one on fire, one naked, two in ski masks and capes.)
Boss: “Never mind.”
You wonder how long this home school thing will go on. Like, will you have to teach your kids med school?
You do your best, sitting in isolation for hours, keeping a safe distance from your family. You hear them outside the door, shouting words of encouragement.
Your kids – “Make us breakfast!”
And your spouse – “GET OUT OF THE BATHROOM. YOU AREN’T SICK!”
By the way, if you are getting a little tired of seeing your family’s face every day, you could always spice things up by drawing moustaches on everyone.
We now have to treat every trip for groceries as though Safeway was a beachhead in Normandy. Gas masks optional. In and out in 90 seconds (including paying for them).
| Every day we look out the window and see the same people and the same dogs, at trees begging to bloom, at rabbits bounding free in the streets, at wispy clouds floating overhead, waiting for the day we are allowed to open our doors to a safer reality. |
Sit Up Service Some of us are attempting to stay fit. “Staying” would imply that there was a level of fitness to maintain. Pro tip: Wake up in the morning and get right into your workout gear. That way you’ve got a much higher chance of spending your entire day in workout gear. |
Breakfast-Lunch-Dinner-Sleep-Repeat
Then there are some of us who are so bored, we have started to read the back of our shampoo bottle. Yesterday, I found the booklet that came with the circular saw and for the first time in my life, read the whole thing. Not that I ever plan to use it. Then again…
Sometimes extreme boredom makes me go check the amount of toilet paper remaining and put on shoes just to see how they feel.
I also found you can tweet from the fetal position while crying.
Cave of Creativity to Paranoia Park
Barricaded in our bedrooms in front of our computers, we toy with the idea of opening a new browser to find clever ways to use dryer lint around the house, or filling a virtual cart with comfy sweat pants or clearance-priced party clothes we can’t wear anywhere.
We Zoom-meet people in squares, while judging everyone’s living room furniture, silently hoping a cat walks through a frame.
We are all still learning how this works, beginning to ask with a greater level of sincerity: “How are you?”
And if you live alone, it’s a master class in solitude.
This time Invites us to question our certainties, our givens, that have lured us into complacency.
Hopefully sharing this collective experience of non-experience will afford us a higher level of deeper compassion and respect for each other, having reciprocity as our bandwidth, working together for a greener, sustainable, and more peaceful world.
OK, time to take off my housecoat, it’s afternoon now.
Hey, who ate my breakfast Pringles?
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