corona virus

by

these quiet times…

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when I was a child, about 10-12 years old
there were times when I would be in the midst of an uninhabited space
and feelings of peace, and of relief would wash over me

I felt able to open up and breathe

I felt I was being shown
a different way to understand my place in the world
in the face of open expanses of land and sea and sky
I felt small and insignificant
and it was a comfort

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I would lie on the ground and imagine
that I could be unmade
all my many parts become small enough that I could be carried on the wind
disperse across the land
to disappear from the human world and fall into the earth
to take root like so many tiny seeds
and this was not a sad thing
I almost longed for it
this communion with the land

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I accepted this alternative perspective
as a child

and I still do

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in this time of quiet
I look out my window
looking onto trees
and all I hear is the wind and calls of birds
and I’m aware that this wild natural world doesn’t need me
I’m not important to it
I could leave now and it would go on
and I’m back where I was as a child
wanting to disintegrate and be subsumed
to be embraced by the rich dark earth
to be transformed
to come back as a leaf or a song or an iridescent feather

 

With the gift of hind-sight I recognize there was an element of escapism in my childhood feelings.
The future was all uncertainty and this desire for disintegration meant I wouldn’t need to confront the unknown country of my teenage years or an incomprehensible adulthood.

And what I realise now, is that this youthful desire, which I sensed then as a desire to disintegrate, to become disembodied, to fly apart into myriad specks of star dust, was really a desire to be integrated into something bigger than myself, something dependable and strong. I wanted to be held safe.

I imagine it now as a desire to become embodied, through re-integration with the land.

It seems that very little has changed.

During this time of isolation, of nationwide lockdown in order to overcome the threat of the corona virus, I’ve had days when this feeling has returned.

There’s something about the quietness, the stillness of current times, that is reminding me to reconnect on a deeper level with the pulse of the land.

I’ve wished I could just walk out into the hills and be absorbed into the ground.

And more than that, I’ve had the sense of how little I matter, and that if humanity stepped aside, the natural world would find its balance again without the stress of our presence.

It’s not that I don’t think my life has purpose or value. It has as much purpose as a seedling pushing its way up through the earth. It has as much value as the shimmer on the back of a bird, the purr of a cat.

It’s just that there are days when I can’t bear the suffering we impose on the land and every other creature that walks or swims or flies.

I walk barefoot every chance I get.

It’s my way of staying connected.

(written all the way back on 12 April
– near the start of the lockdown in NZ)

©griffin2020

 

by

hearing silence

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During the week of 16 – 20 March 2020, we were just getting used to the announcement the previous weekend that anyone entering the country would be required to self-isolate for 14 days. It seemed to have the immediate effect of reducing the amount of traffic on the roads, as if everyone had started to keep their heads down, hoping this virus would pass them by.

On Wednesday 18 March, I was talking with a dear friend, and confessed I’d been feeling very strange.

“It’s so silent… it’s as if I can hear it… it’s not just that there’s so little traffic… it’s something more than that. It’s as if I can hear silence…”

And I discovered, she felt the same.

We both felt there wasn’t just less background noise from the lack of traffic, but that even the birds were quiet. As if they’d moved further away. And there was more than this.

“I can hear the silence… as if it’s a presence, a being in its own right. It’s like a psychic, spiritual silence, something we’re not usually aware of.”

It was as if the silence was something we could feel, a weight we could sense. As we attempted to explain what we were feeling, we decided it felt eerie, almost foreboding, as if something else was coming. We talked of it as a psychic silence. That it felt like something beyond this material world, something spiritual. We struggled to find the right word to describe what we were feeling. Perhaps there isn’t one.

Then while talking about this with two other close friends shared that they had noticed strange things involving animals – frogs falling silent, cows clustering together.

It was all starting to feel very unsettling.

Perhaps we had just started to pay attention.
We were noticing the absence of sound.
We were hearing silence.

And perhaps what we were sensing was the sheer enormity and power of the natural world, which our society has managed to separate us from for so long. As if we had suddenly stepped off a structured path and into a forest, and were struck by the changes in sound and smell, of temperature.

I’d felt that I was sensing silence as if it was a weight, something heavy and ominous.

Perhaps the screen of the modern world had lifted, and revealed the ripe, rich, wild world just beyond the doorstep. Not preparing to take over, and not waiting for me to me to cross over, but purely alive and present.

Perhaps what I sensed was the deep, slow heartbeat of the land.

 

The following Monday, it was announced that Aotearoa/New Zealand would go into lockdown at 11.59pm 25 March for four weeks. I discovered that although nervous, I felt relieved.

And now that we’re a few days in, I’m finding this period of isolation is giving me the opportunity to slow my own rhythms, to synchronize my blood and breathing with the earth.

The silence?

It was the lack of traffic I was noticing. Fewer cars, hardly any planes.

And the birds?

I hear them. They were always there, in the trees around my house.
It was my listening, my attention that was struggling to adjust to absence.

I have the chance now to fill my ears with every other sound around me.

bird-call, rain, wind
the soft tread of the cat as he crosses the room
the tremor of a leaf
the expectance between heartbeats
the promise of a held breath
the weight of silence
anticipation, abundance, potential

 

©griffin2020