Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 6

I’m wide awake at 4am and I can just about hear the sound of an overground train. Why are there trains at 4am?

I take a deep breath and feel into my centre. There is the now familiar flutter in the chest and knot in the stomach. I know this feeling and I call it fear.

I remember an email from the day before. Trainline isn’t offering a refund on my ticket for next weekend. I was meant to be visiting friends in Manchester. Instead, they are telling me I can reschedule free of charge.

How am I supposed to know when I can travel by train again? It’s now impossible to make future plans.

I have a habit when I don’t want to be with what’s happening now. My favorite form of resistance is project my mind into the future. I’ve been working on that one for a long time. I’ve sat for hours in meditation, waking up in the middle of some fantasy about what I’ll be doing tomorrow, next week, in a month, or a year. I’ve re-directed awareness over and over again to my direct experience now. I’ve asked myself, hundreds of thousands of times:

“What can’t I be with right now?”

Now, when I can’t make any more plans. Now, when all the plans I have made are cancelled. Now, when all the past plans I made and carried out are no longer taken for granted. Now, now, now.

John Lennon said:

“Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.”

This is life. Right now. And I don’t want to be with it. But I know the only way out is through, so I come back to the breath and the sound of the train and the birds that are starting to sing. Earlier and earlier they are starting to sing. Spring is here and thank God cause imagine if it were November.

I sleep in because its Saturday and that’s what I do on a Saturday. Although lately the days have been bleeding into one another and it’s hard to distinguish the weekdays from the weekends anymore. We’ve only been in isolation for a week but I’m already starting to forget what “normal” feels like.

While drinking my coffee, a friend from the east coast of the States calls. She is just waking up. She is in a 14 day self-quarantine after getting one of the last flights out of Barcelona.

Which was a ghost town. At the international terminal she’d watching the board all day. Only 10 flights out to anywhere. And somehow, she got home. She connected through Heathrow where everything was business as usual. At least she could get some lunch.

They say we’re two weeks behind Italy. Two weeks ago Italy went into lockdown.

The next call is with my ex who works as a nurse in a children’s hospital in Manchester. No one there is taking this thing seriously. She went to buy food in a retail park and there were people everywhere. She is angry and scared.

What the fuck is wrong with our government? They have been slow to respond, not been clear or strong enough in their messaging. They’ve left it up to us to decide what to do. Of course people aren’t going to take this seriously. Of course they are still in denial.

The government doesn’t believe people will obey a lockdown. Or they will for a while and then get fed up. They say we need to time things right. But we’re running out of time. We’ve run out of time.

Later we go for a walk. I want to see water, am yearning for spaciousness and flow. We pass a house with rainbows in the window. A child’s way of helping. We pass a pub that’s shuttered closed. The sign in the window says:

“No cash, booze or toilet paper has been left on the premises.”

An incredibly British way of saying, “Don’t even think about breaking in.”

We head towards the reservoir. But the whole neighbourhood has had the same idea and there are people everywhere. At times it’s hard to stay 2 metres away.

We cross the marshes and notice a group of young people sat close together in a circle, drinking, smoking, laughing. I have to work hard to not judge them. It doesn’t work and before I know it, I’m grumbling to myself. We are totally screwed.

I make it home just in time to talk to a friend in San Francisco. They’ve been ordered to shelter-in-place. Everyone is complying, no problem.

She tells me about a case of CV showing up in a local bank. Everyone who worked there was sent home. The bank told the cleaning company what had happen. That they’d need a deep clean.

The cleaning company did not tell their staff. They sent them in there without masks or gloves. They sent them in there.

I wonder if that’s because they think their workers won’t do their jobs if they know the truth. If one of those cleaners gets sick and dies, who will be held accountable?

I remember something one of my favorite writers, adrienne maree brown, wrote:

“If you trust people, they become trustworthy.”

Our governments and employers don’t trust us. I have to admit to myself that I also don’t trust us. I want to trust us. But I don’t.

My partner comes into the room while I’m still on Facetime. My friend starts showing us around her garden. There is something deeply relaxing about it. I get homesick for San Francisco as she shows us more and more of the various plants growing there. She points out a deep purple flower that looks like something from another world. I wish I was back in that world.

We eat left-overs and decide to watch Contagion. About halfway through I realise I have definitely seen this movie before. I keep knowing what’s gonna happen next. There is a strange sort of relief in that. Millions die. Then everyone else gets the vaccine and life goes back to normal. The end.