Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 36

This morning I read an article about Boris. He’s still recovering from COVID-19. He's feeling cautious about relaxing social distancing too soon. I wonder how much his own illness has affected his relationship to social distancing.

In my effort to take better care of my body I’ve decided to do some mindful movements this morning. As I’m standing in the middle of my lounge swinging my hips and letting my arms fly high from side to side, I suddenly remember being out in the middle of a frozen lake, covered with snow.

I was on solitary retreat in Maine last January. I think the movement has brought on the memory, as I was doing it every day as part of my practice regimen.

It was one of those beautiful crisp New England winter days, bright blue sky, the air warm with the scent of freshly fallen snow.

I put on my boots, coat, gloves, hat and scarf and headed out the door, down the hill and onto the snow mobile tracks crisscrossing the lake. When I got to the middle, I stepped off the tracks, turned away from the sun and fell backwards into the snow with a sigh.

I looked up at the blue sky, letting my eyes soften into the great expanse stretching limitlessly above. Slowly, I tuned into the sensations of the back of the body against the snow, cold slowing starting to creep in, tingly and exciting.

I imagined the thick layer of ice below the snow, and under that, cold, dark water replete with fish, and deeper still, the bottom of the lake, deep, muddy earth.

Back to the sky now, I could feel the warmth of the sun across the whole of the front of my body, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. Gazing into the deep blue, I allowed the whole of the front of my body to open to space. My heart softened and expanded.

Fire, space and air at my front, water and earth at my back. Hot and cold. Spaciousness and stillness.

All the elements converging in this moment. Remembering they are all always there, converging in any moment.

I spend the morning writing and the afternoon on Zoom. By 4:30 it's time for our walk. We head out to Hackney Downs again. As we enter the park we see a police car driving through. This is the first time we’ve seen them in the park.

Our favourite spot, hidden between the hedges and a couple of pines, is empty of people so we collapse in the grass for a little while. My partner mentions that the police might find us here. I say if that happens they’ll just tell us to move on. My partner comments that we could be fined.

So be it. If they want to fine me for temporarily occupying this little stretch of grass and the trees swaying in the wind above I’ll pay the price. As I stare into the great blue expanse soft, white petals whip past on the breeze.

My partner pulls out their new iphone 11. In the middle of all this they’ve managed to get an upgrade. It’s been ridiculously easy and we’ve wondered how that’s possible, as it’s never been straightforward before.

It came in the mail. They simply had to look at it and it knew who they were. They simply had to hold it close to their old phone and everything was magically transferred over.

It’s got three lenses. Yes, three. It takes gorgeous photos. Now they want to test the video quality. They take a video of me laying in the grass. They ask me how I am doing and I tell them to try and capture the petals floating in the sky above us but it’s impossible. I say I’m hanging in there.

Later, on the phone with a friend, we are talking about time. Commenting on how time has seemed magically slow, fast and completely still all at once.

Since the world came to a screeching halt, it feels as though spring has sprung a thousand times. We keep seeing the same flowers bloom and fade, bloom and fade, like edelweiss, over and over.

I am reminded of one of my favorite Dogen poems:

The bright green color of the peach and plum trees so shiny and lustrous.

Manifesting in these very branches the same spring of hundreds of generations;

It is foolish to despise what is close by or value something that is far away;

Right now remove all doubts by seeing what you see and hearing what you hear.

I’m struck by the connection between timelessness, faith and paying attention. When we drop into direct experience, it’s clear that nothing ever happens. There is just this. Without the concept of time, there are no things to cling to. Just change.

It makes sense to me experientially, but I struggle to put it into words. Perhaps I don’t have to. Let the poetry speak for itself.

My friend says it’s so hard to plan anything. That it feels there is no future to plan. Her imagined future keeps shifting in her mind, like tectonic plates.

I remind her that we never know what is going to happen. We know just as much what is going to happen when we step outside our front door each morning as at the time of our death.

The curtain has been pulled back on the illusion of thinking we can ever control what happens next.