Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 21

Yesterday I started to miss the tube.

Before coronavirus I’d go out of my way to avoid commuting at rush hour. To help me cope when I had no choice, I professionally recorded my very own meditations specifically to help get myself and others through the unpleasantness of packing into a metal tube, deep underground, hurtling through space.

But since coronavirus, a part of my psyche has been left wondering what’s happened.

I miss meeting the transit workers sat behind the glass window at our local Overground station. I used to enjoy smiling, waving and saying hello to them as I passed.

They always seemed both surprised and delighted that someone was actually acknowledging their existence. One of them is often the neutral person (someone you don’t know very well) in my loving-kindness meditation.

I miss the combination of overwhelm and excitement as I stepped through the barriers at Liverpool Street station. As one of central London’s busiest, the station’s a potential mosh pit, hundreds of people moving at great speed in every direction imaginable. I’d take a deep breath as I prepared to make the great traverse across the concourse towards the entrance to the Underground.

I had a well worked out method for making it across without crashing into anyone.  The trick was not to give into the temptation to focus on the goal, but instead to broaden my awareness as much as possible so that I could anticipate anyone coming my way and alter course accordingly, before it was too late. It always worked a charm and soon I’d be through the Underground barriers and onto the westbound Hammersmith and City line platform.

I miss waiting for the next train, opening to the sounds of other trains coming and going, wheels screeching, air whooshing. I miss people-watching, this man dressed smart for an important mtg, that family with big suitcases going somewhere exciting, those tourists on their phones, tentatively asking someone for directions, this busker singing for his dinner.

I miss the way Londoners maintain a safe distance from one another. Before coronavirus they were really good at that. Even at rush hour, they were clearly uncomfortable standing so close.

I miss how mostly everyone was on their phones, but there was always a handful of people reading actual books, writing with pen and paper, sitting with their eyes closed or simply staring out the window.

I miss how fast the light changed as we whizzed in and out of stations, sometimes emerging into daylight just long enough to get a mobile signal before descending into darkness again.

Yesterday I joined an online meditation led by a friend. He was talking about cycling in central London. With little noise from traffic and people, he could hear the birds singing. It occurred to him that they were probably always there, but he’d never noticed them before.

I wonder what Liverpool Street station is like right now. I wonder what delights I’m missing.

Instead of commuting, now I simply have to roll out of bed and pick up a device, any device. And sometimes I don’t even bother rolling out of bed.

Lately when I hear about mtgs, social or religious gatherings I catch myself imagining them taking place where they should have been. Around a table, at a pub, or in a shrine room. Then I remember that it’s not just me whose gone online, it’s the whole damn world.

No one is gathering in these places. They have been left abandoned. Left silent and still. I wonder how they sound and feel now, without the people.

I’ve been reflecting on the strangeness of this new online life. My greatest fear is that I’ll get so used to it I’ll forget how it was to be with other people, in the presence of others. I’ll forget how it was to occupy space with others, the great collective negotiation of who is where when.

Perhaps I’ll grow to fear it so much I avoid going back.

I’ve been thinking about our ancestors. How at some point they stopped wandering around and began to settle down, build houses, farm the land, domesticate animals. I wonder if for some it felt just as alien, being cut off from their natural environment, so intimately a part of them until then.

I fear a further cutting off, a further withdrawal from each other and by extension from our own humanity. I fear completely losing touch with our place in the world.

I’m reminded of the 2009 film Surrogates starring Bruce Willis. It’s set in a dystopian future where every”body” stays home, their brains plugged into a computer controlling a younger, more beautiful, able bodied robot. While their body stays home, the surrogate goes out and lives life in the “real” world.

I’m kind of in that world now. Except instead of robots living my life out there, I’m living my life online. My body is confined to my home, but my mind is “plugged in”, stretched out across time and space, interacting with other minds through keyboard clicks, remote controls, cameras and mics.

The world is still as beautiful and chaotic and unknown and exciting as it ever was, but I can’t go there.

Except for our daily walk.

Today we passed our postal worker as we headed out. I thanked her for continuing to work. She flashed us a smile and a wink and graciously said you’re welcome.

Yesterday a DPD delivery man arrived at our front door with my partners new wireless keyboard and mouse, which they need to work from home. Before handing me the package he laid it on the steps in front of him and took a photo, explaining that they can’t collect signatures anymore.

In that moment I missed the ritual of signing for a package. Here was a new ritual, him laying the package down like a sacred object, documenting the arrival of it at my door, and then me picking it up.

I asked him how he was doing. He said he was holding up. I told him to take good care of himself. His response was that he had no choice.

No choice but to take care so he can keep working so he can keep eating so he can keep living so he can keep working. No choice but to put himself in harm’s way every day so we can get what we need to work from home. No choice.

I realise the transit workers, and the delivery man and the postal lady are all out there, still commuting, still occupying those spaces with all the other essential workers, together in their aloneness and the solidarity of the great weight they carry for the rest of us.

I hope to join them again one day.