Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 42

Spoiler Alert: Details of Homeland in last three paragraphs.

I’m wide awake in the middle of the night. This happens every once in a while. Usually right before I’m about to start bleeding. I’m never conscious of waking up. I just know I’ve been asleep and now I’m awake.

I ask myself, “What’s here?”

It’s fear. I’m in the grip of it. It’s not about anything in particular. More the general existential kind. I take a few deep breaths into the belly, feel into the sensations of my body against the mattress beneath me, and call on a couple of tried and true protectors to sit with me in this familiar crucible.

Eventually I fall back to sleep.

My partner and I have a morning routine that starts with them waking up before me. They roll over, give me a kiss, tell me they are getting up and ask me what time I want my coffee.

I ask what time it is and depending on that and various other factors like how tired I feel and what the sky is doing I usually pick anytime between an hour to two hours later.

But this morning I’m not falling back to sleep. My back hurts and my mind’s racing. I send my partner a text asking for coffee but they are not responding so I get up and sort myself out.

They’re sat in the front room deeply absorbed in something on their computer. I assume it’s either work or their psychotherapy course. Turns out I’m wrong about both.

It’s a guidance document they are working on for our Buddhist community about inclusion of trans and gender diverse people. I agree to review it once I am properly awake.

After a couple of hours of lounging around reading the news and catching up on saved items on Facebook, it’s time to go for a bike ride. We decide to head to the Olympic Park and find a quiet spot to have a picnic.

I have to mentally and emotionally prepare myself, as the ride includes narrow canal and river paths. Before getting on my bike I take a few deep breaths, reminding myself that everyone is doing their best and that there is no need to get frustrated with others.

I’m going to take it nice and slow and stay as far away from other people as I can and if they come too close, I’ll do my best to communicate my needs. And if that’s not possible, I’ll just work with it.

To my relief, people seem to be taking greater care than ever before. There aren’t as many as I imagined, it being a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon. There’s plenty of space and time to make our way and I only end up being passed too close by a couple of joggers and cyclists.

I forgive them.

We get to the Olympic Park and it doesn’t take long to find a quiet spot along the river, well off the main path and in amongst some tall grass and young trees. We eat lunch and then my partner reads their Kindle while I sky-gaze and nap.

The earth beneath us is harder than in Walthamstow Marshes. I spend a bit of time feeling into it and can sense disturbed energy. I ask my partner what was here before it was the Olympic Park. They tell me it was wasteland.

Such a strange word, wasteland. Can land ever be a waste? What are we creating in our collective consciousness when we relate to the land, or each other, or anything else from a strictly utilitarian point of view? Seeing land as a commodity to be used up and wasted.

One of the things discussed in the Pandemic as Portal panel I watched yesterday was about going back to ancient wisdom. From a utilitarian point of view the top of the mountain can be extracted because of the riches that lay beneath which can then be plundered for profit.

From the perspective of interconnectivity and a deep connection to and respect for the land, the top of the mountain must stay intact because it provides a place for water to fall, flow from and feed into deep springs which then bring sustenance to the ecosystems below, which all of life depend upon.

I reconnect with the qualities of stillness and solidity beneath me. Even though this land feels disturbed, those qualities are also there. I tell the earth through this connection that I am here, and willing to hold it while it heals.

The young trees all around me look healthy enough, they are doing their work to also hold this land as whatever trauma came before is slowly cleared.

We head home in just enough time for me to get on FaceTime with my regular Sunday night date. She tells me she’s gotten into negative mental states about the protesters in the US who want to end the lockdown.  

I remind her that they are very confused people who have been manipulated. Powerful right-wing groups funded by the likes of the Koch brothers sponsored the protests and advertised them through Facebook.

They are not grassroots. They are part of the machinery of the old world that is dying and knows it’s dying. These are last ditch attempts.

Regardless, it’s still not comforting. There are people out there who would literally prefer their neighbors die so they can get a dye job.

I tell them about the panel discussion. There are two ways to relate to what’s happening. See it as a gateway, a bardo, a place full of possibilities, even amongst all the suffering. Or take it literally and get completely depressed.

I am reminded of something a teacher of mine once said. That if we only related to the difficulties of life literally, as painful tragedies, we would go mad. But if we could also relate to them on a mythical level, looking out for what might be learned, liberated and emerge from them, then they become the ground of deep transformation.

After my call it’s time for dinner, roasted vegetables and tofu over quinoa with tahini sauce. I spend the rest of the evening writing until it’s time for Homeland. The penultimate episode.

I’m amazed at how things can unfold so quickly with well-paced scenes and just enough dialogue to keep things interesting. The episode ends with Carrie facing an impossible choice.

Either kill Saul in order to reveal his Russian asset and stop a war with Pakistan, or keep his secret hidden and risk nuclear annihilation.

I rack my brain trying to figure a way out for her. I come to the conclusion that only through divine intervention, like Saul suddenly dying of natural causes, can she squirm her way out of this one.