Dolphins in Venice
Friday,
20th March 2020
Where is your attention? How has it shifted? Might,
amid the panic and gloom, there be some good in all this?
I am not a sociable person. I am happy in my own
company and, in fact, get exhausted if I don’t manage to carve out time to
myself in which to be still, to be quiet, to reset. But this week, my attention
has all been outward. I have spent more time on the phone and WhatsApp this
week than the last year combined. I am thinking about everyone I know, their
mental and physical state, and how I want to reach out and connect. And this
isn’t me, usually.
Also, I am talking to strangers. These minor
encounters at the garage, queuing for groceries, in the changing rooms at the
yoga studio, which, previously, were spaces where I kept my eyes from meeting
others’ and my conversations stripped down to essentials, are now charged with
meaning. ‘How is this affecting you?’ I keep asking. And then people talk and
they want to be heard and to share and to connect.
Last Sunday, at yoga, there were 23 people. On Tuesday
there were four, including me, Amanda, one other woman and the yoga teacher.
There was plenty of space to keep some distance from others but in the silent
stretching and the near empty studio, there was (sorry, but I’m feeling a bit
spiritual today) a deeper connection. It felt like a sacred space. One where
you could tune out the madness and the anxiety and the shifting sands and just
breathe your body into different positions. The next night, there are eight
people and again, just like outside the studio in the wider world, the class
was both more meaningful than usual and more necessary. We all smiled at each
other at the end and wished each other well, and I surprised myself by really
meaning it.
Post-Brexit, this might be a chance for healing
divisions, helping the less fortunate, performing deliberate acts of kindness.
And maybe, as the dolphins return to Venice and deer wander shyly out of the
woods and into Disneyland, we will realise that life is precious (Jesus,
I really am sorry for those of you who might have expected a rant or something
vaguely amusing about lighthouse keepers but I seem to have lost my irony. Oh
my god, I’ve been infected with sincerity… It won’t last, nothing does (hold
on, that’s better: a bit of darkness creeping in)).
So, lovely people… hold on to what matters; make more
things matter. Tell yourself that everything is going to be okay.
Latest data for the UK
Infected: 3,983
Deaths: 177
Celebrity Deaths: None (but Caprice Bourret claimed on the Jeremy Vine
Show on Monday that she knew better than the medical expert doctor in the studio
because ‘she had read about it in the newspaper.’ Always good to get an opinion
from someone whose job it is to wear clothes… So good luck, Caprice!
People I know who are infected: 0
People I know who have died: 0
Song for the day: ‘My Old Man’s A Dustman’ – Lonnie Donegan (B-side is
My Old Mum’s A Keyworker)
❤
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