VITALITY Cincinnati

LESSONS LEARNED WHILE WAITING OUT A PANDEMIC (so far)

When I sit more often and do nothing ( = meditation), I have a much better sense of my life, where I am going, what holds me back from my dreams.  And those ‘holdings back’ get loosened and melt away the more I sit, even if I uncomfortably squirm.  Soon enough, a great peace — an ecstasy — arrives.  Often on the next sit after squirming. 

All the yeast is gone at grocery stores.  Fascinating….and now all these posts of friends baking bread.  I guess if we’d always wanted to make bread and break bread within our homes, it took ‘time’ and the fear of death to follow this dream and desire into reality.  Fascinating.  

‘Of time and the river.’  It was the slow life of staring at the river and getting blissed out that gave birth to yoga, to poetry and song, to the rise of the prophets with Samuel on the mountaintop with the misfits and their wild experiences of the wind — Yahweh.  And you too?  Does your grass call you to sit and watch it grow?  Even if you are still working full-time from home or in a hospital or supermarket or wherever . . . there’s nowhere to go those non-working hours.  Watch with me, wherever you are, and you too will know yoga, Yahweh, THE ALL.  And a poem might erupt out of you too.

When the shit hit the fan, our first buy was toilet paper.  I guess we’re still in the anal stage . . . too rigid, too disordered.  Freud might have been right about that.

I guess we’re not exactly the United States of America . . . with governors trying to buy PPE and medical-necessary items at online bidding sites and sometimes getting outbid by federal agencies . . . sigh . . . and that disorder in our planning and preparedness and rigidness about who is to blame might fall on each and every one of us.  Sigh.

The love I thought I embraced so much with every person of the past . . . how I fooled myself, thought I soaked it all in and shared all I had, as I now go through old letters and notes and memories come and flood back and I’m awash in that love all over again and discover just how much I’ve missed.  Sigh.  Tears.  I will do better, I will be better, while this pandemic changes life and after the so-called ‘all clear’ is given, even when we won’t be able to hug each other.  To learn to love through our eyes, our open hearts . . . our future.

Things change.  Quickly.  Subtly.  The emergent unfurling of Spring is an active reminder.  What was not there yesterday is there in full regalia today.  What was in bloom yesterday now rots on the sidewalk.  True of myself, my body and all that is my body…my emotions, my imagination, my memory.  Every breath changes my body/structure/emotions forever.  Every thing I daydream does too.  Every show I watch or don’t watch.  Every song I sing.

I might be wiser to ‘sing myself’ . . . 

My beloved and I watch American Idol while staying at home, he’s at his place and I’m at my place.  He streams the show and I ‘watch’ and listen as we FaceTime, we chat during the commercials.  I’ve always been a fan of Lionel Richie ever since I was in 3rd grade and constantly singing ‘All Night Long’ — yes, 3rd grade!  Today, to see Lionel Richie having an inspiring 3rd career  — Commodores, solo artist, and now mentoring young artists so tenderly — inspires.  The road, the show is never over.  As long as we find another breath and another breath, it all begins . . . 

may we be so bold . . .

— Brian Shircliff