Hey there!

Wherever you are, I hope this finds you safe and well (and wearing your masks!) during these challenging times.

Do you also find that some version of the basic metta (lovingkindness) blessing — May you be happy. May you be well — opens most of your correspondence these days? In times when the world is going crazy, sending forth this little bit of love feels hopeful, vastly insufficient, and better than nothing.

It has been a while — and what a heart-rending and nail-biting and teeth-gnashing time we’ve all been having. I published my last post back in February, just before heading to the East Coast for a two-week visit with friends and family. I flew back to California about a minute before the pandemic shut everything down, and then we all found ourselves staying home alone for much longer than we’d planned. And here we are still.

At a time when so many people are suffering and struggling, Craig and I are constantly reminded of how fortunate we are, even under Covid conditions, with one another for company, a comfortable home and garden in which to self-isolate, ample resources, inquiring minds, and plenty to do. Not to mention neighbors with a sense of humor!

Retirement in a pandemic

For me, life during this pandemic is much like what my retirement would have been under normal circumstances — minus the social gatherings, alas. With seemingly endless, unstructured time stretching before me, I gradually began to establish patterns for my days and weeks, to take on projects and set goals, and to create rituals to mark significant moments. Since I was having trouble figuring out how to begin writing again, I focused my energies instead on working though my photos from recent and not-quite-so-recent trips and turning them into postcards (links below). This fall, I’ve been taking a beginning drawing class, working at our local food bank on Fridays, coaxing my orchids into bloom (or trying to), planting a garden, becoming a bird-nerd (about which, more later), and documenting the rhythms of my life in visual calendars (more later about these, as well).

Over the past months, I have made a small discovery, which started when I spent an afternoon cleaning out my condo in preparation for new tenants. I went through every room, spot-cleaned the carpet, scraped paint from the floors, collected the numerous bits and pieces left behind for disposal or redistribution, washed the kitchen and bathroom rugs… and generally wore myself out in the process of reestablishing order. And it felt great! The next day I spent a couple of hours digging out the roots of the grasses that infested one of our raised flower beds. A challenge for me but, again, gratifying.

For someone whose work has always centered around reading, writing, and the computer, the simple satisfaction of undertaking and completing physical tasks has been a revelation: hanging clothes on the line, packing potatoes into mesh bags, repotting orchids, or planting and watering a bed of flowers. There’s pleasure in the doing — in being more active throughout the day, living more immediately in my body, striving for proficiency and efficiency — and pleasure in the having done. And when the world’s craziness is just too much to contemplate, taking up each piece of damp clothing in turn, figuring out the best way to hang it, and then clipping it to the line with clothespins provides welcome focus and distraction. There’s grace in being able to set the world aside momentarily.

Taking the long view

In times of despair, I can also find solace in considering things from a different perspective. The twentieth century, for example, witnessed more than its share of manmade horrors, and yet we survived. And then there were the so-called Dark Ages (which might not have been as dark as all that — but that’s another story). And what, I wonder, will 2020 look like through fifty or a hundred years of hindsight? I won’t be around to find out, but there is comfort in borrowing the bristlecone pine’s point of view and remembering that all things have their seasons. Death, fire and pestilence, even a wicked leader with lies on his lips and delusions of dictatorship: these, too, shall pass. As the Avenue Q crew puts it, “Life may be scary, but it’s only temporary…” Or consider Anne Lamott’s phrasing of the same idea:

Thanksgiving is this week, and I came across this passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s journal, which struck me as apt for both the holiday and the pandemic season.

The word hanker stood out to me here. Hankering suggests discontent, a longing for something we can’t — or at any rate don’t — have, an itch that can’t be scratched. Emerson contends that Nature provides “world enough for us,” and reminds himself — and me — to look around and “ponder” her minor novelties. Hankering after Niagara is for the foolish, he suggests, and in this period of pandemic isolation, I think Emerson has a point.

Amid all the difficulty and despair, we can still find small marvels to delight us, silver linings to these persistent clouds. One day, we hope, will come again a season of adventure and discovery, thunders, multitudes, and Niagara. But in the meantime, here is world enough to enliven our solitude: the whirr of hummingbird wings outside my office window, autumn leaves glowing as if lit with inner fire, new buds on my purple phalaenopsis, and the fall of acorns.

Scrumptiously crunchable

Always a delight to me in this “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” (autumn always makes me think of Keats) is the CCRRRACK! and CCCRRRUNCH! of acorns beneath my feet. Whenever I walk, I keep my eyes peeled for a fall of acorns — though more often than not my feet find them first. Where acorns are thick on the ground, a deliberate stomp followed by a good twist breaks them open in a scrumptiously crunchable way. Stomp! Crack! Crunch! It’s so satisfying that I often linger to crunch as many acorns as I can, before realizing with a twinge of guilt that I should leave some for you to enjoy. (You’re welcome!)

What makes this activity so delicious? Like popping bubble wrap or squelchily squashing the air-filled bladders of beached kelp under bare, sandy toes, it is wanton destruction with no serious consequences. That’s fun, of course, but I think the real pleasures here are auditory and tactile. It’s the pressure, resistance, and sudden release, coupled with an unmistakable pop as the shell or capsule gives way in a small explosion. Even better, acorn-crunching is paired with other delights: the crisp nip of autumn, azure skies, and maybe a teasing brrr-eeze to announce the imminent arrival of winter.

Going high

Emerson’s mention of a “glimmering star” reminded me of Robert Frost’s wonderful poem “Choose Something Like a Star.” My Google search suggests that the poem is not well known, except among those who, like me, learned it by singing Randall Thompson’s haunting setting (in his song cycle entitled “Frostiana”). I sang it many years ago but still remember the words and melodies well. Here’s a recent rendition by the Harvard University Choir (this piece is the last and begins about 22 minutes in):

The poem is an appeal to a star (“the fairest one in sight”) for wisdom and insight: “Say something to us we can learn / by heart and when alone repeat.” The star’s response is simply to proclaim its essence: “I burn,” it replies. The poet presses for details, but receives “strangely little aid.” Yet in the end, the star’s “loftiness” offers implicit wisdom and a possible response to troubled times like the ones in which Frost was writing (World War I) — and like ours: