Quiet

I welcomed the strong winds that accompanied the storms over the last few days. Usually I curse their arrival as they litter my property with sticks and branches that hail down from the large trees covering most of the acreage, leading to hours of bending and clearing and hauling. I have always called my gardening philosophy “controlled chaos” as I embrace nature, by and large, to wisely proceed with limited interference by my ignorant and fumbling attempts to manage its intricacies. 

The first few weeks of compliance with the stay-at-home orders issued by the state of Virginia felt maddeningly quiet to me. I can only compare it to being blanketed by a heavy and deep snowfall in Upstate New York when the snow absorbed and muffled every audible sound. In both instances, human activity grinds to a halt, but under current circumstances the winter storm like quiet has gone on for days and days as if no one bothered to plow the streets and the snow refused to melt. 

My neighborhood is still. The school buses aren’t running. The planes aren’t flying overhead periodically as they take off and land at the airport just seven miles from here. My neighbors aren't chasing the clock in and out on their way to and from work with garage doors opening and closing, opening and closing. The refuse vehicles still appear periodically, the leaf blowers are making an appearance, and the delivery trucks run filled with necessities and comfort taped in a cardboard box. The overarching quiet seemed to sound an alarm of impending doom.

In the midst of the deafening silence, I realized that my mind began to fill the void with fear and negativity. I like to call this the psychological form of the first law of thermodynamics which states energy is conserved, but it can be converted. As we were inundated with constant changing information about the pandemic, I was converting the quiet to a running reel full of questions, worry and “what ifs.” Random and disparate thoughts were sapping me, converting my energy from serenity to frenzy in an attempt to control when things were starkly out of my control. I don’t know about you, but I like to control things, a ruse that serves the useful purpose of keeping anxiety and panic at bay, especially in a crisis.

Unfortunately, this crisis isn’t passing anytime soon, and I had to get a hold of that downward spiral and find a way to live more in the present again, to fill the quiet with productive thoughts through productive activity. My family and I discussed strategies from the very beginning, but it has taken me a while to implement a new healthy routine that felt like an authentic replacement of my accustomed everyday living. Taking control of my news intake helps. Reading that inspires the soul and feeds the imagination helps. Writing and gardening help significantly, too. 

Somehow the windy days blew away my sluggishness, the scattered thoughts, the unease. Stillness remains the overarching sound sensation as I sit at my desk in my window-lined office with the green of spring as bright as an over processed photo. I still feel sadness and worry and anticipate plenty of ups and downs in spirit, but gratitude and hope are in the mix, too, as birdsong breaks the silence and I swear I can practically hear a chorus, blades of grass growing at breakneck speed in soil saturated by the heavy rains. No music has ever sounded so sweet as the hum of silence I now hear. 

Citizen of Dark Times
by Kim Stafford

Agenda in a time of fear: Be not afraid.
When things go wrong, do right.
Set out by the half-light of the seeker.
For the well-lit problem begins to heal.

Learn tropism toward the difficult.
We have not arrived to explain, but to sing.
Young idealism ripens into an ethical life.
Prune back regret to let faith grow.

When you hit rock bottom, dig farther down.
Grief is the seed of singing, shame the seed of song.
Keep seeing what you are not saying.
Plunder your reticence.

Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song.

 

Showing Up

My thoughts have been hazy and jumbled the last month under stay-at-home measures. I haven't blogged in years, but an upside to this crisis for me is a commitment to return to writing. I am beginning to see the trees clearly through the lifting spring fog outside. The trees are showing up. The poems are showing up. Clarity of thought is showing up. I return to some blogging with a photo, a poem and some reflections. Sign on for the feed to join me more regularly, if you find these musings on a word or a phrase to be meaningful in one way or another.

A love of poetry may be an enigma to many. I can only say that poetry finds me when I need it most, elicits tears, and cleanses unlike any other written medium. Leaving Early spoke to me yesterday, and I must insist you hear it read aloud by Pádraig Ó Tuama with an Irish lilt here on The On Being Project. The On Being Project had the wisdom to create a vehicle for you to immerse yourself in a single poem with Poetry Unbound. I guarantee that you won't be sorry you took the time. It was chosen as a poem in gratitude to health care workers but really it will be a gift for your soul. My thoughts follow.

Leaving Early

Leanne O’Sullivan

My Love,
tonight Fionnuala is your nurse.
You’ll hear her voice sing-song around the ward
lifting a wing at the shore of your darkness.
I heard that, in another life, she too journeyed
through a storm, a kind of curse, with the ocean
rising darkly around her, fierce with cold,
and no resting place, only the frozen
rocks that tore her feet, the light on her shoulders.
And no cure there but to wait it out.
If, while I’m gone, your fever comes down —
if the small, salt-laden shapes of her song
appear to you as a first glimmer of earth-light,
follow the sweet, hopeful voice of that landing.
She will keep you safe beneath her wing. ~

Today is Easter Sunday. This week is Passover. How apt to have read that the nurses in a New York hospital begin their shift in prayer. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindi, no matter as long as the faith of every health care worker is represented. Every prayer is welcome and deserving of breath. No one is worthy of more. No one is worthy of less. The shift will be filled with life and death in its starkest form. Each soul yearns to be lifted from the depths to find words of consolation and condolence. COVID-19 spares no one. Somehow, a crisis such as this lay bare the commonalities of our humanity, the kernels of truth our clouded vision fails to see most days of our existence.

I wonder.

Why do these workers, by and large, continue to show up despite dwindling personal protective equipment, knowing the very contagious virus lurks in their midst? They face long hours, hallways filled to overflowing, and few resources to combat the illness. All the while their lives continue full bore with families of their own, obligations and responsibilities of unspoken depth and breadth remaining outside the hospital on the other end of a long commute as an ocean of emotions ebbs and flows just below the skin. Duty comes to mind. Compassion. Kindness. Perhaps, scrubs are donned with little thought as simply the right thing to do.

For a stranger. 

And not just the health care workers. The cleaning staff. The security guards. The administrative assistants. The lab workers. Those who stock the shelves, gather the laundry, collect the trash. Of course, essential workers cover many other fields as well in transportation or food production or manufacturing or public safety. And, so many are likely very different from you and from me – they may have different color skin or an accent. They may have voted for the opposite political party or come from a different part of the city or state or country. They may practice their faith in a building like yours but one that displays a different religious symbol. 

No worries. 

They show up with compassion and kindness as days melt into one another. They would care for you. They would care for me. We could be cynical. It may be all about the paycheck. Would you quit your job right now? Let’s not romanticize this. Many are underpaid and hazard pay certainly isn’t commensurate to the risk. Showing up is a radical act. Irrational. For the least among us with the greatest needs. An act of love. Of hope. The church doors may be closed for worship. The temple doors shuttered. The holiday gatherings diminished. Forget the ritual. Open your eyes and take a look around. 

Remember.

When the crisis hits. The virus or the natural disaster or an act of terror. Someone shows up. Steps up. Helps. Then, we want the institutions we so often disparage and under fund and deem unnecessary to be there for us. 100%. The hospital. FEMA. The military. Academia. We want the Federal coffers to open wide even though we complain about our taxes and cut, cut, cut. We want the social contract between business, government and society to rapidly and solidly support us even after years of kicking the stool right out from underneath ourselves.

Not me? Not you? 

First and foremost, stay home and keep everyone safe. Then, remember to show up today as well as your many days down the road. Show up fully informed with new resolve to fix and mend and aid those known, those not yet known, those we may never know. Show up for the people across the aisle, on the street, in the institution, down on their luck. Show up to give generously and gratefully. Show up to question and challenge and expect better. Show up because what you do matters and is the right thing to do. Show up, because you are humbled and grateful and exercising what may be the holiest of acts no matter your faith.

Show up.