Same Same, but Different
Stepping outside is a combination of titillating wonder at the wideness of the sky with its splashy clouds and circling crows...and terror. Not of the virus, but of my fellow man. It's incredible how much has changed in a short time.
Just over a month ago walking around outside in South Africa was considered foolish by many. "You walk? In the mountains?" ejaculated with a tut-tut look about the eyes. The best part was that you were condemned not just as a foolhardy human who clearly didn't care about her children to partake in such a dangerous activity, and for what? When you could easily exercise in much more secure ways. The gym (perish the thought) for instance. Worse, you clearly were willing to inconvenience, nay, risk the very lives of the selfless volunteers and medical staff who would have to rescue your body after it was inevitably stabbed by some crazed tikkop or when you stumbled and fell to your death.
Still, I did it. Because Walking in Nature is My Religion!
It was also one of my patchwork of "jobs."
Before...all this....
So now I walk with a different fear. And interestingly it still falls along race lines as does just about everything else in South African life. Now I don't walk with my pepper spray in hand anticipating an ambush behind every lush protea or the buchu which is filling the air with such heady fragrance at the moment. Now I walk with a facemask dangling from my ear since this is mandatory...even if you are alone, under the sky, with not another infectious/waiting-to-be-infected human in sight. Now I walk avoiding the eyes of drivers, of which there are oh so many, with my shopping bags ostentatiously signalling that I am on a permissible errand. Although that didn't prevent someone projecting from their two acres of Noordhoek paradise after their purebred huskies got into a tizz about me perambulating along their boundary fence: "You couldn't wait 2 days?!" This was before our Hard Lockdown was downgraded from Level 5 to Level 4 on May 1st. Worker's Day. Before anyone knew what that would actually mean -- not a whole hell of a lot as it turned out. Surprise surprise.
We're allowed to walk outside between 6am-9am which is mostly dark and cold here in the Cape. So there goes the one and only perk of Lockdown that I can see -- sleeping in. We chase the teens out of bed and force them around the block. Of course tweens are super cool with staying in a darkened room all day on a screen. SO good for them. Not. And not over my dead body.
Today I walked to the shops and wondered at the magnificence of our surroundings. Right here, yet completely out of reach if you are to adhere to the draconian nonsensical regulations. I stood in a long queue with my social distancing trolley buffer sprayed down with hand sanitiser, peering through fogged glasses, struggling for breath in the sour exhale trapped in my suffocating mask. I have seen every kind of ill-fitting/conceived mask -- including a crocheted number that was more holes than not. I was quite jealous actually, because at least she could actually breathe. My favourite are the masks worn under the chin, or with the nose exposed. And how exactly do face shields work? It all defies the laws of Physics or Common Sense for that matter.
I saw a dear friend who is undergoing chemo in a complicated contraption and my heart broke for her that in her time of personal health crisis the whole flippen world had to go completely pear shaped. The security dude asked me something that I couldn't understand through his mask but on the fourth try I got it: "Are you a pensioner?" I couldn't even blame it on my au naturel grey hair, since it was under a cap. Clearly the stress is getting to me because instead of taking an opportunity to jump the queue I replied curtly, "Obviously not!"
People speak hopefully about this COVID-19 Pandemic bringing lasting change. I'm afraid I don't see much sign of that in the crazy judgemental attitude of rants online and in the eyes of those around me. The atmosphere is oppressive. We feel like naughty children no matter what we do. Bound to piss someone off or get fined or arrested. A single-mom friend stopped en route home to her house full of kids and animals to just savour a sanity saving look at the sea (when I catch a glimpse of our ocean my heart hurts profoundly) and was immediately pounced on by a cop telling her that she needed to go otherwise she would be fined R5000. This morning the military and police were out in full force on Kommetjie's Longbeach because surfers deigned to oppose these bs restrictions.
I shared a letter by a powerful white man who had to first try and excuse that fact before laying out the other facts of this disastrous situation. I felt slightly irked because everything he's saying is what I've been saying all along, only with the added handicap of being a woman with no influence.
All we can do is try to carve out a way of being in this new world that won't drive us stark raving mad. My long time dream of living independent of society and more in touch with Nature is being forced to a head. As is often the case in life, crises build until we are forced to make the changes that are best for us. (PS if you have a piece of land that you'd like me to take care of for you, I'm up for it!)
The only relief I find in the current circumstances is in meditation -- a moment of peace in these anxious times, a respite from the prattling mind and pressures of trying to find a way to exist.
And in Nature.
I woke up to "The sleeper must awaken" the other morning, a line from the sci-fi masterpiece "Dune." Interestingly another bit from the David Lynch film adaptation that I had last watched at least two decades ago, came to mind when I blogged about Fear just before the paw-paw hit the fan. I see these sleep/dream messages as injunctions from my subconscious or Jung's Collective Unconscious or even the Divine.
Time to wake up. No more deferring the life we intend living.
We are working through Deepak Chopra's 21 Day Abundance Meditation Challenge as a family. It's lovely to appreciate all that we have and to actively create more of what we want. Yesterday's task was to draw those things that light me up, fill me with energy and it turns out I have everything I need.
Here's to more of the same.
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Still, I did it. Because Walking in Nature is My Religion!
It was also one of my patchwork of "jobs."
Before...all this....
So now I walk with a different fear. And interestingly it still falls along race lines as does just about everything else in South African life. Now I don't walk with my pepper spray in hand anticipating an ambush behind every lush protea or the buchu which is filling the air with such heady fragrance at the moment. Now I walk with a facemask dangling from my ear since this is mandatory...even if you are alone, under the sky, with not another infectious/waiting-to-be-infected human in sight. Now I walk avoiding the eyes of drivers, of which there are oh so many, with my shopping bags ostentatiously signalling that I am on a permissible errand. Although that didn't prevent someone projecting from their two acres of Noordhoek paradise after their purebred huskies got into a tizz about me perambulating along their boundary fence: "You couldn't wait 2 days?!" This was before our Hard Lockdown was downgraded from Level 5 to Level 4 on May 1st. Worker's Day. Before anyone knew what that would actually mean -- not a whole hell of a lot as it turned out. Surprise surprise.
We're allowed to walk outside between 6am-9am which is mostly dark and cold here in the Cape. So there goes the one and only perk of Lockdown that I can see -- sleeping in. We chase the teens out of bed and force them around the block. Of course tweens are super cool with staying in a darkened room all day on a screen. SO good for them. Not. And not over my dead body.
Today I walked to the shops and wondered at the magnificence of our surroundings. Right here, yet completely out of reach if you are to adhere to the draconian nonsensical regulations. I stood in a long queue with my social distancing trolley buffer sprayed down with hand sanitiser, peering through fogged glasses, struggling for breath in the sour exhale trapped in my suffocating mask. I have seen every kind of ill-fitting/conceived mask -- including a crocheted number that was more holes than not. I was quite jealous actually, because at least she could actually breathe. My favourite are the masks worn under the chin, or with the nose exposed. And how exactly do face shields work? It all defies the laws of Physics or Common Sense for that matter.
I saw a dear friend who is undergoing chemo in a complicated contraption and my heart broke for her that in her time of personal health crisis the whole flippen world had to go completely pear shaped. The security dude asked me something that I couldn't understand through his mask but on the fourth try I got it: "Are you a pensioner?" I couldn't even blame it on my au naturel grey hair, since it was under a cap. Clearly the stress is getting to me because instead of taking an opportunity to jump the queue I replied curtly, "Obviously not!"
People speak hopefully about this COVID-19 Pandemic bringing lasting change. I'm afraid I don't see much sign of that in the crazy judgemental attitude of rants online and in the eyes of those around me. The atmosphere is oppressive. We feel like naughty children no matter what we do. Bound to piss someone off or get fined or arrested. A single-mom friend stopped en route home to her house full of kids and animals to just savour a sanity saving look at the sea (when I catch a glimpse of our ocean my heart hurts profoundly) and was immediately pounced on by a cop telling her that she needed to go otherwise she would be fined R5000. This morning the military and police were out in full force on Kommetjie's Longbeach because surfers deigned to oppose these bs restrictions.
I shared a letter by a powerful white man who had to first try and excuse that fact before laying out the other facts of this disastrous situation. I felt slightly irked because everything he's saying is what I've been saying all along, only with the added handicap of being a woman with no influence.
All we can do is try to carve out a way of being in this new world that won't drive us stark raving mad. My long time dream of living independent of society and more in touch with Nature is being forced to a head. As is often the case in life, crises build until we are forced to make the changes that are best for us. (PS if you have a piece of land that you'd like me to take care of for you, I'm up for it!)
The only relief I find in the current circumstances is in meditation -- a moment of peace in these anxious times, a respite from the prattling mind and pressures of trying to find a way to exist.
And in Nature.
I woke up to "The sleeper must awaken" the other morning, a line from the sci-fi masterpiece "Dune." Interestingly another bit from the David Lynch film adaptation that I had last watched at least two decades ago, came to mind when I blogged about Fear just before the paw-paw hit the fan. I see these sleep/dream messages as injunctions from my subconscious or Jung's Collective Unconscious or even the Divine.
Time to wake up. No more deferring the life we intend living.
We are working through Deepak Chopra's 21 Day Abundance Meditation Challenge as a family. It's lovely to appreciate all that we have and to actively create more of what we want. Yesterday's task was to draw those things that light me up, fill me with energy and it turns out I have everything I need.
Here's to more of the same.
Subscribe to Foot Sore & Fancy Free by Email
And please verify your email address (check your junkmail!)
Thanks :)
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