Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 24
April 8th, 2020. I wake up feeling like this date is somehow special. I rack my brain to try and remember why but can’t quite put my finger on it.
As my partner hands me my coffee they tell me that they’ve just read an article about how a group of scientists trying to figure out where the virus started aren’t convinced it came from wet markets in China.
This is why epidemiology is such a difficult discipline. Lots of guess work and assumptions. It’s nearly impossible to trace things back to the source. Without knowing how it started, it’s also harder to anticipate or have a hand in how it will end.
I think to myself that we never really know how anything started or how things will end. All we can ever truly know is what’s happening now.
I remember being on solitary retreat once. I was about to eat a boiled egg. I decided before eating the egg to reflect on all the beings and conditions involved in the process of this egg arriving in my hand. I started with the person who cooked me the egg, then the one who bought it, then the person who stocked it, then delivered it, then packed it, the farmer, the chicken, what it ate, where it lived and on and on and on.
I had to laugh at myself when it occurred to me that it’s impossible to know all the conditions that have led to an egg arriving in my hand and also no way to know which came first.
Over coffee I end up scrolling through Facebook which is good because the mystery of today is solved. It’s an old friend’s birthday.
She’s one of those friends with whom it often feels like no time has passed between mtgs. We can hang out for hours and never run out of things to talk about.
We met at university 20 years ago, kicked it in the Bay Area for a while after graduation and then lost touch when she moved to New York a few years later. Last year she moved to London on a one year Fulbright scholarship and we reconnected.
The strangest part was that she’d moved into a flat right around the corner from the West London Buddhist Centre, a place where I sometimes teach and attend a weekly meeting on a Monday afternoon. Perfect conditions for meeting up for lunch or dinner (or both!).
When we went into lockdown, I remember being disappointed that we wouldn’t be able to meet up anymore. We were just starting to get re-united.
I send her a happy birthday message and she immediately writes back telling me what she’s been up to. She’s been dancing and says she can’t wait to meet up when this is all over.
Me too.
I spend the morning catching up on email and writing my blog until the doorbell rings. It’s the dpd man delivering our new desk chair. He is still well.
Until coronavirus our desk was simply a dumping ground for papers, files, and unopened mail. But since we’ve both been working from home it’s become prime real estate. The only thing missing was a chair, so we ordered one online.
It’s come flat packed. The instructions are IKEA-like in their vagueness. No words, just numbers, letters and pictures. That’s not the way I think. I prefer the clarity of words. I like thorough instructions.
It takes me about half an hour to assemble it. It’s stylish, has wheels, swivels and adjusts up and down.
It’s interesting trying to negotiate the full-time use of a small, one bedroom flat with one’s partner. They are on the phone A LOT. I am on the phone sometimes but mostly need a quiet place to write. The two spaces available to us are the bedroom and the lounge. Both have up sides and down sides.
Both are noisy in different ways. From the bedroom you can often hear the sounds of neighbors in their back gardens. Children screaming, parents scolding, music playing, lawn mowers running, raking, talking, barking, and someone grunting as they take shots at their outdoor punching bag.
From the lounge you’ve got the usual sounds of cars and motorbikes passing, sirens wailing, people walking by talking on their phone or listening to music, and now the more often than not sound of my upstairs neighbor holding court on the doorstep.
From both the bedroom and the lounge I can also hear birds singing and strangely, seagulls crying. I remember when I first moved to Stoke Newington I was struck by the presence of seagulls, which I had never noticed in the two other parts of London I’d lived in. I asked a shopkeeper about it and she said she thought it was because of Hackney Marshes.
I find it comforting. Often when I hear them crying in the early morning I pretend I’m living in a flat by the sea. I imagine that at any moment I could walk out the front door and be bobbing around in the water in no time.
The negotiation of space usually boils down to who has the most important Zoom call requiring an acceptable background. But there are also considerations around how long someone has been confined to the bedroom, whether one of us needs to eat something (our lounge is also our dining room) and how long it will take to “de-camp” from one space to the other if one of us needs to jump on an unexpected call.
For a while we were exploring the possibility of getting a second desk for the bedroom. I was adamant that there was no space, we’d have to get rid of half our wardrobe and at least one chest of drawers.
But then, as if by magic, we discovered that one of our chest of drawers had a secret, hidden shelf in it that slides out and doubles as a desk. Walla, insta-desk.
Of course, as is so often the case, one thing has led to another and now my partner wants to get another desk chair for the bedroom.
We’ve both been so busy all day that it’s after 9pm before we can take our walk. We head out into the balmy air and immediately notice the absence of other people. We decide to head to Hackney Downs.
Being in the park at this time of night is sheer bliss. Not only are there no people around, save the occasional jogger, but the full moon is rising, round and pink, and casting a soft glow on rooftops, trees, and grass.
Apparently it’s a super moon. We’re meant to make wishes to it.
I try taking photos of the moon but there’s no point. The beauty is impossible to capture on camera. So instead we stop and take it in for a while.
We start off on the well-lit path that lines the outside of the park, but the further we walk the bolder we get and before we know it, we’re off cutting through the grass.
All of a sudden we spot a dark figure in the middle of the playing field in the southwest corner of the park. I squint to get a better look and notice that the figure is moving, dancing in fact. Dancing in the light of the moon.
I consider joining them, but then think better of it. They have come to dance alone in the middle of the park in the dark of night lit only by the glow of the moon. This is a sacred, secret, solo affair. A one person moon dance.
Heading back home we agree that night walks are where it’s at. Tomorrow we’ll be back again.
Later in bed I remember that moon and breathe out a wish. But wishes shared may not come true, so I keep it to myself.
I’ll let you know if it comes to pass.