It would be tax day.  Instead we have an extension for reasons unfathomable in my lifetime.

Steve and I continue living in the same house while doing our best to isolate from each other until he gets the results of the virus test.  Imagine if tests were available quickly for us all, but we as a country weren’t prepared.

We have a president who can’t and won’t accept responsibility.  Instead, he blames. He has now decided to withhold funds from the World Health Organization, who did identify and warn about the disease, and provided test kits the U.S. refused. Therefore, our response, thanks to our president, was delayed beyond that of other nations.

I’m trying to view this with equanimity but some days provide a higher tree to climb than others.

This morning my hand goes to a book of Japanese death poems.

I open the book to this one by Masumi Kato who died in 1825 at the age of sixty-four. It provides guidance for a day that with ripening spring offers light earlier and later each day.

The surface 

of the water mirrors

many things.

Steve’s doctor has ordered the test for the virus.  Now, it goes to the Marin County Health Department and we’ll get a notice of where to go and when.   It’s odd because in this moment, the only moment, all is the same. It’s a beautiful day and we’re in our home with plenty of food and two loving, sleeping cats.

I’m reminded of Annie Dillard’s wonderful words from her book An American Childhood.

“What does it feel like to be alive? Living, you stand under a waterfall.

You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs rising roughly backup, up to the roiling surface, full of bubbles that slide up your skin or break on you at full speed. Can you breathe here? Here where the force is the greatest and only the strength of your neck holds the river out of your face. Yes, you can breathe even here. You could learn to live like this. And you can, if you concentrate, even look out at the peaceful far bank where you try to raise your arms. What a racket in your ears, what a scattershot pummeling!

It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation’s short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.”

I just Face Timed with my son, his wife, and grandchild.  Grandchild is on approach to six months,, and his smile and delight warm my heart and bring me to the sweetest of tears.

Yesterday was quite a day.  My son saw an article on the virus and how it might show up in the hands.  Steve has been dealing with the dermatologist for over a week over what looks like frostbite on his hands.  She thought it might be stress, as who doesn’t feel a bit stressed right now, but then yesterday an article passed through Kaiser from the Jerusalem Post, and it would appear Steve has the virus.  

We immediately divided the house in two although if he has it, then, I probably have it too, since we’ve literally been sheltered-in-place for over four weeks, and obviously together before that.

We are living in an “Is that so?” world.  We both feel great, and, there’s this odd little thing going on, and I really don’t know what to say other than that. Well, maybe, a little more.

My brother passed away a year ago today, and now Steve and I are living like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera though we don’t have a bridge between our two abodes.  We talk through doors.

Each moment, new, as we know, and lately moments seem a little newer than before.

A beautiful day to All, and here’s the moon this morning, divided in half, which fits the seen and unseen these days, as we navigate new paths.

Light comes, the moon a beacon in the sky.

On Saturday, in a Sensory Awareness workshop, we were led to feel our anxiety.  In honoring its presence, I felt expansion and fuller pumping in my heart. Yes, anxiety, and so much more.  

I’m with the words of Iris Murdoch.

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

It’s a new day and I balance on the day after a holiday with the enthusiasm of  walking down a Yellow Brick Road, open to adventure that always leads Home.

 My brother passed away a year ago tomorrow.  I feel him here, embracing and lifting me to put on my top hat, and like Fred Astaire tap a dance and sing, sing, sing.

May we all live the blessings of a shared new day.

It’s a day to celebrate spring, light, and resurrection.  The cells delight in opening, as though each is an egg with a chick now released,  pleased to chirp outside.  

I open to pages in a book of quotes from Charlotte Selver, my teacher of Sensory Awareness.

“In order to come to the true,

 we have to notice the untrue.”

Perhaps that’s what this virus is giving us, an opportunity to notice we are all connected, and currently there is disparity in the connection.   We strengthen when we recognize and honor the value of each person contributing to the whole.  

Charlotte also said: 

“There is no room any more for holding back, or

being lukewarm

or protecting against something which may not

at all exist now. 

And in case we actually need to protect ourselves now,

we can do it openly.

We can protect ourselves in freedom

instead of carrying all this constriction

which pretends to protect us.”

And, for me that’s what this time of year is about.  The bud opens and displays its petals for landing strips, invites birds and bees, and reproduces lavishly, and so may we each display our gifts and share, tossing our abundance generously into the world, today and everyday, like a bunny giving eggs.

I keep coming back to this poem for how to handle life today.

Clearing

by Martha Postlewaite

Do not try to save

the whole world

or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create

a clearing

in the dense forest

of your life

and wait there

patiently,

until the song

that is your life

falls into your own cupped hands

and you recognize and greet it.

Only then will you know

how to give yourself

to this world

so worth of rescue.

I’ve been cleaning out and organizing closets.  I feel the shift in the energy in my home, an opening and entry into spaciousness.  I woke this morning from a dream where I was noticing corners of my house that were stagnant and holding energy.  I was clapping and ringing bells, singing “wake up”. Perhaps that’s what this time together, yet separate, is about, a cleansing release.

A few days ago, I was introduced to the website One Planet Poetry.  You write a haiku and in the fourth line add another word. Each “coronaku” is related to the writer’s experience of the pandemic and its accompanying quarantine, self-isolation, and social distancing.

It’s fun.  Write a haiku with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third.  Then, one word.  

Here are mine for the last three days.

  

Sheltering-in-Place

Hovering over

Days like waves, tides rise and fall,

Outside knocks within.

Pause.

Sheltering-in-Place

Nap time, unscheduled,

Arrives around two, three, four.

Eyelids close both doors.

Sleep.

Sheltering-in-Place

The moon still hangs, beams, 

In morning sky, sun rises,

Two hands holding waves.

Play!   

Sheltering-in-Place

Home, a shawl, warming

the heart of energy held,

released, global weave.

Peace.  

The moon is exquisite, a bright light in the morning sky.  

I’ve never been much of a shopper but I’m having dreams of shopping, of entering stores, clothing stores, book stores, plant stores, and seeing arrays of products beautifully and lovingly arranged and displayed.  

I try to support mom and pop shops, and I want them to make it through this.  Meanwhile turkeys are gobbling away this morning. They love to talk.

I’m beginning to take in that things won’t return to “normal” whatever we might have thought that was, and truly no moments are ever the same, but this is such a huge world-wide shift. 

The sun just touched the ridge.

Wake, we’re told over and over again, in so many ways. Wake!

When one is by the ocean, life is so clear with the ocean waves moving up and down, and the tides moving in and out.

Of course this movement is observable everywhere when we pause to let this journey percolate in and out.  Currently I’m in a trough awaiting the rise.

In Brian Doyle’s book, One Long River of Song, he writes:  Birds are how air answers questions.

That statement stops me in my currently very limited tracks.  

Sheltered-in-place, I have time to sit with those six words for hours, be with them like a Zen koan. 

It’s gray today, birds tucked, but when they appear, I will watch them differently, as I reflect on and wonder about the birds fluttering in the air within as it moves and passes in and out.