Friday, August 21

a collective unravelling

written in march


I send love to my friends who have been practicing being housebound for five or ten years before this era, who had already capped meeting sizes, distanced and locked down. We would have been incredulous had we been told these measures would become not just widespread, but illegal to deviate from in our lifetime.
Due to a virus.
Albeit, not the infester that changed many of our histories, that insidious but rarely fatal, glandular fever. It all began with a virus for me and whilst I believe the fear being spread is too strong, I also know in my very cells that viruses can alter.

If we had been told this strange time was to come, I would have thought that it could have been almost heartening to be all in the same boat for a league. Me no longer an inch more distanced than others. A special pass handed to me to skip everything that was over exerting, and a pass given to everyone else just for good measure so that no one feels a pang of FOMO. Missing Out Together (MOT), will that be good?

In reality, no.

It's almost like I can feel a heaviness that wafts in the air, and settles on empty cafes, and seeps in and out of the nooks and crannies of every house which looks more lonely than it used to. It's a groan. It rings loudly in the silence, that everyone is missing a lot.

I overheard two conversations on my recent forays into fresh air, one was a man saying to another, 'I'm just waiting to get it...' and another was, 'masks'.

(I was cycling and my chain came off. With greasy hands I struggled to get it back on for my first time and a kind gentlemen noticed my plight and came to help. We were closer than 1.5 meters from each other. I said, 'I know we're not meant to be close, just tell me what to do from a distance', but he came in and risked my breath and then I couldnt wipe the smile on my face for a few minutes as I raced along afterwards.)

I would have thought before if it had been prophesied to me (and mercifully it wasn't), maybe everyone will handle their removal from their old lives with mental tranquility? Has my illness grief been a defect in my resilience and adaptability? But, I would have been wrong. I see humans ache, hardcore ache like I have never witnessed. It's a little inhuman not to work and rub shoulders with others often. Composer Brett Dean, isolated in hospital with covid wrote: "A number of correspondents have asked whether I can use the time to compose, however it hasn’t felt like a time of creativity in any way whatsoever. Like the rest of humanity at the moment, I see this as a period we must all get through, learn from and then put behind us."
Illness and isolation never will be cruisey, despite what cursory glances suggest. It isn't a holiday or escape. Daily sleeps for ten years have not been a pleasant task for me in the slightest; they are intruders to waking plans, not naps on a balmy island.

I doubt a many-year stint of isolation would lessen the ache, for anyone. It hasn't for me though I have carved a new way of living. Adjusting to things and aches going away are entirely different things and not to be confused. The missing-humans-and-human-flourishing ache lingers. Intrinsically programmed.

This unexpected release from outing hangovers and the novelty of being like everyone else is not as comforting as I would have thought. I savour some parts of it. Mostly I am struck by something new - that staggered suffering, whilst often bringing a sense of isolation, is very good. Waves dunk us at different times in our lives and we drink in gulps of joy at different times. We use ventilators one by one. It's better to have a few pulls in a jumper, than a whole row unravelled.
I can see it clearly now, of course it's better that not everyone is struggling at once with the same thing.

A couple of nights ago I loaded a recording from the MSO as I sat on the couch with Ben, a pleasant evening where our children had gone to sleep for a short spell, and we had banned ourselves from covidity conversations. I saw that one of the musicians was a classmate from school.

That school where I got the virus which left the package: Post Viral Fatigue for DC, at my door, and gently taped it closed.
I thought, as I watched the musos do what I was hoping to do: I was the snag, the pulled stitch. I have not liked being the snag, but mercifully the whole knit didn't unravel, just to keep me company. They kept on in their practice rooms and now they're bringing us unadulterated beauty.
When I later see others return from isolation to unlimited human interaction, and I don't go as far as them, and I don't go without hangovers, I think I will be able to be more wholeheartedly celebrate that many can flourish after tasting a collective unravelling.  

Wednesday, June 17

the end of drudgery


Often when I sat in the gym on the seated row machine, looking around the grey equipment, I had a curious experience. I felt like I was looking in on our society as one from another society or from a century ago. I saw us like rats on ferriswheels, encaged, in an artificial environment, human yet almost robotic. I felt bleak like I did when I read 1984.

I never thought of not going, though. Never. And I didn't hate it even though I often had a mini existential crisis there. I just did it and felt a little unhuman mentally. When dwelling in a body that stashes blood in the feet making them the hue of luscious berries, whilst the other organs are in a state of weak jealousy, you take rat wheels with gratefulness. Cardio helps my low blood pressure a lot, and instantly. It is like life to me, because blood is life.

Years ago on the exercise bike, I would try to inspire myself to push through the discomfort by reminding myself that this was so I could get well enough to have a baby. Now that this deepest dream has come to fruition twice, I chant that I want strong legs so I can dance. I have to have a reason to get my heart rate up to that unconfortable can't-talk level. I don't like to think about POTS much, though it is the reason I am there. It doesn't uplift me to dwell on the labels which describe the challenges in my body. Apart from grief days when I'm very unwell, and bad recoveries from 'normal' outings which sting me with their wrongness, I tend to manage my health and it's requirements without giving it much mental space now days. Just as I brush my hair and dress by humdrum habbit, so I take keep my diet, manage my supplements, and exercise.

So, exercise at the gym was a fine yet drab peice in my life. For ten years, almost without break. I can't even lie down unwell for a half a day without my blood pressure dropping in a very life affecting way due to lack of exercise.
Ballet, that's desert. My come-alive form of activity, although the muscle recoveries are a significant cost.

When Covid-19 sprang into my unsuspecting reality, I was not excited about outdoor rides. I didn't like that I couldn't get my heartrate up to precisely 170 bpm, for exactly a 2 minute interval, in a completely wind free environment, on the one not-squeaky exercise bike at the gym, looking out at the carpark watching people buy pizza and park their cars with more skill than me one hundred percent of the time.

I wanted that; that blandness.
I wanted it because it was normal.

My first ride was on Ben's bike. He is 6 foot, and I am not. I was precariously balanced on top of it, riding down roads at peak hour, and because the frame was such a stretch for me I soon had blisters on my hands. I was so unstable on it I couldn't even use my arm to indicate and my saddle was bruised for days.

Next I tried my baby sister's bike and it was just right. It was a wonderful size for me, but I was frustrated that the one gear wasn't hard enough to get my heart beating fast in the minimum amount of time that I could achieve at the gym. And I didn't like riding on the road.

Eventually I decided to try the rail trail which my house is located on, because I hadn't any fondness for wondering if cars would treat me with respect. After 2 years of living along the trail, I finally set off down it.

I got a whiff of fire smoke in the first minute, and it took me to childhood and early marriage holidays and golden autumns. I had never smelt anything at the gym other than sweat, my own and others, or men who had held the trigger too long on their aerosols, so I was pleased.

I rode past old people with frames and on scooters, and pondered their lives and their courage as they fill their days without physical prowess. I saw two ducks splashing away with glee in their muddy playdate. I involuntarily smiled. You don't smile at the gym. It's not cool. You will look like you're a real person, with real feelings.

As I rode on, to my amazement I found myself in the country. I live near the city centre where Ben rides to work, so I wasn't expecting rural properties so soon. Trees and green surrounded me, and dappled sunlight littered the path with excruciating loveliness. I smelt dung and it made my heart leap as I located the cows of it's making. I smelt sheep. I'm a kiwi who will never tire of the scent of sheep. I sniff my balls of wool with relish. I saw people tending their glorious horses. I saw alpacas, stubby ponies, and great danes. Rabbits were nibbling on the side of the path.
The air was crisp, and the sky was beginning to paint it's end of day pictures. I felt the time of day, the almost twilight, was too beautiful for me to inhale. By now I was puffing and sore and struggling, with no idea what my heart rate was. But I didn't care if it was 120 or 170 bpm, the stats didn't seem to matter.

Soon it came to deciding to purchase a bike instead of a gym membership. Now I set off with happy anticipation into the cold evening air when I'm feeling unwell, and arrive home in better health almost invariably. It still astounds me almost as freshly as the first time a decade ago, like it's some bizarre magic trick. Will I ever adjust to this back to front cure? And now, it's not drudgery.

To find this aliveness and happiess, through being forced to exercise for ten gruelling years, is so bright. To find it from another forced event: a pandemic.

It is like many other things that have happened to me, a books worth, of unexpected blessings. I have a yellow book with them all in and more to write.
Ben cosleeps with our babies because I need blocks of sleep and we wouldn't train them that their cries go unheard. This 'imposition' has given our little ones a deep love and trust of Ben that would not have been likely to occur if they'd spent only an hour with him after work each day.
And so, something else life enriching grows up out of this life we would not have signed up for.

Ben and I have no shortage of mutual interests, and we began our cloning early, but he has spent 12 years interested in biking without me sharing in it whatsoever. He is fairly stoked to be looking into baby seats and tail gaiters for family weekend rides.

Time, my friend!
I was told two years: two years and your illness should end.
And now it passes ten years.
I am somewhat healed. That's the terminology I use instead of still unwell. No blasts of recovery, no healing prayer success story, no tale of how I changed my thoughts and overpowered my body's reality, no miraculous diet or curative supplement or medication.

The plant in my garden that I thought was totally dead, not a hint of green, it was slowly working underground. Imperceptibly. And then it budded and I was astounded.
That's my journey, so slow, it's almost imperceptible even to me. But growth takes place in private darkness, hidden away, and I was made by One who views ten years as a minute.

Thinking in decades is strangely hope inducing!
What hopeless or bleak situation will be eliminated in another ten?
What aliveness will come from something still dormant...

Sunday, May 10

still still


We all stopped for an illness
And in the stark stillness

Though short in term, and heath intact,
We struggled

Taste of those who live, sick and long, without the fullness

We will soon embrace, resume, 
And my pace, soon solo: looms

Cheer deeply the whir restarting after the collective crumble 

And ponder the time the world asked nothing of us...