Sheltered

Around the same time, sheltering-in was enforced, I found a permanent place to live. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Each day, I settled more and more into my place. I tossed new embroidered pillows from India on my new bedspread, vases of flowers from the garden were brightening up the shadows. It rained. I listened to the news regularly at first. The sad deaths in Italy seemed to never end, and the stories of how swiftly the virus spread felt scary. It kept raining. Every story, no matter what it was about, was about Corona, Covid-19. Even a radio game show. (really!) The news was like a slow drip of poison getting injected into my veins. I even had a "nightmare" of going inside a store and getting spat on by a fellow shopper. A nightmare that never occurred to me in my wildest imagination a few weeks ago.
During and after WWII, people's nightmares were of Nazi's. The fear has transcended generations, becoming a universal dream to our grandparents, parents, and children. Is being spat on our new Nazi nightmare? Will this be the new universal dream? I laughed about this, but it was haunting me none the less. What will our dreams become? What will our lives become? So, I shut it all off. Every bit of news, every device, every phone call. I chose to "Be Here Now," like Ram Dass, the famed hippie who wrote during the '60s for a generation of young people striving to slow down, get back to the garden, and be free. Turning off and tuning out was the most straightforward solution and instantly healing for me. I pinched the drip. The poison stopped. *** Now, as the quiet grows louder, and the isolation feels fuller, I learn more about what I allow myself to do. I've always recognized that there are no excuses for creating. You do it, or you don't. I tend to jumpstart and stop. I call it fear. Most of the time I call it complicated. I start a project and enjoy the process, but that momentous question of why I am doing this trips me up. So many things manage to nudge their way to the front of the line. Clean a junk drawer, do the laundry. Procrastinate just a bit longer. I do tend to get in my way. I've even dreamed I ran over myself with the car once. A clear symbolic message if there ever was one for self-sabotage. As the quiet settles my restless spirit, my reasons for not being creative fade into the background. The rain has stopped and with it the procrastination. Sheltering-in has allowed my mind to focus, become grounded, and pursue projects that I've been looking forward to doing. I've finally gotten out of my way, mostly. Then again, old habits never die fast.

~kao