Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 70

We both sleep in until 9am, total bliss. My partner spends the rest of the morning in the front room on the phone with a friend. I hang around a bit in bed. I feel full of the stories from my father about his mother’s family and childhood summers at the family farm.

Our conversations have brought the place to life for me. I can almost hear the sounds of the river roaring and the massive bell in the middle of the courtyard of the farmhouse ringing to mark the beginning and end of the working day.

I can see the poplar trees lining the main road that ran right through the middle of the farm, leaves rustling in a gentle breeze, and taste the dust in my mouth, freshly kicked up by a passing vehicle.

I feel more connected to my ancestors and also affected by diving more deeply into their complicated lives. I’m feeling into the heart dissonance there, knowing they were wealthy landowners who profited off the work of the poor.

I’ve always known that our family lost the farm during the transition to socialism. My father says it was taken over by student activists. But in our last conversation he also admits that some of the workers joined them.

Apparently they barricaded the entrance to the farm and slaughtered all the animals. I can’t help but feel angry about that, even though the socialist in me also sympathises with the cause.

Knowing the history makes me feel deeply uncomfortable and I often can’t stay with the discomfort long enough to feel into what else might be there, calling for my attention.

This morning I breathe deep into my belly. Immediately I get a sense of my grandmother, how devoted she was to her faith and her family. I can feel her love for me and how much she wanted us all to be happy.

I remember her calling me when I was at university and had recently come out of the closet. She wanted me to know that no matter what choices I made in life she would always love me. Even though she couldn’t say it, I knew exactly what she was talking about.

I also remember something my Dad told me a few years ago. That one time someone had come to the farm interested in buying it. My grandmother had taken the offer quite seriously, but in the end her adult children talked her out of it.

Her argument had been that they didn’t know if the farm would always be theirs, that anything could happen and that perhaps it was best to sell it now. That it would leave my father and his siblings in a much better financial situation where they would be able to eventually buy their own homes in Santiago.

She was a deeply pragmatic woman who knew that loss was unpredictable and could come at a moment’s notice. But my father and his siblings were too sentimental. They couldn’t imagine losing this place they had grown up in and that held so many important memories for them.

She must have felt painfully vindicated when they eventually lost the farm. And I also wonder if her wish to get rid of it had something to do with the injustices that took place there. Or maybe I just want to believe that to make myself feel better.

I get up, eat a bowl of porridge and then get ready to go on my first social distanced walk with a friend who lives ten minutes from us by foot.

I head out the door and start walking towards Upper Clapton Road. On the way I see a Muslim family dressed to the nines hanging out in their front garden. They are hanging a banner that says, “Eid Mubarak” meaning “blessed feast.”

As I walk by one of the men looks up at me, smiles and says hello. I smile back and return the greeting. There’s a spread of beautifully laid out food and drink on their front windowsill that looks delicious. I can tell they are expecting a crowd.

Lately the news has been full of stories about research that suggests it’s much harder to spread or catch the virus outdoors. That also might explain the children’s birthday party we saw in one of the fields in the marshes yesterday that included about half a dozen kids and at least a dozen adults.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has published a frontpage article listing 1,000 of the 100,000 Americans who have died of COVID-19. The list of names filled the entire frontpage. And that’s only one percent of the total.

I read somewhere that it would take four days to read all the names of the dead out loud.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister’s top advisor was caught traveling hundreds of miles and visiting various locations while symptomatic. While symptomatic.

And it looks like the Prime Minister isn’t going to do anything about it. Nothing.

Meanwhile, protests in Hong Kong and Chile are kicking off again. People are putting their lives on the line, risking sickness and death to demand freedom and food. Food and freedom.

It is becoming more and more clear to me that one of the biggest things that needs to change is how we do food. As a global community. The entire food industry is a large part of how we got into this mess and figuring out how to fix it will be how we get out.

I recently read an article by Indian scholar and activist Vandana Shiva. Her stamina is so impressive. I remember studying her work when I was in college almost 25 years ago.

Back then she was already warning us about the dangers of habitat encroachment, monocultures, genetic engineering, pesticide use, and the deep connections between the agricultural and pharmaceutical industries.

She was prophesizing and now it’s all coming to a head.

This is the train of thoughts running through my mind in the five minutes it takes to get from the Muslim family’s party to my friend’s flat. I wait for her on the paving.

She opens the door and we greet each other by kissing the air. Then we head towards the Walthamstow Marshes. For me, it’s the second day in a row I’ve been out there.

On the way we pass a post office. There is a man out front preparing a display of various plastic products like plant pots, brooms, laundry baskets, and washing up bowls. He looks up at us, smiling, and asks how we are doing this morning.

We exchange the usual pleasantries as we walk by. Later my friend asks me how I know the man and I say that I don’t, I just try and be friendly to everyone.

We get to the marshes and start heading towards the reservoir. She tells me about her work as a planner for an NHS hospital trust. She had been working on their environmental impact strategy before coronavirus.

When we get to the dusty track between the canal and the marshes we come across a pair of lost keys. My friend picks them up and says she doesn’t know what to do with them. I suggest we leave them hanging on a near-by sign. Only later does it occur to me that we could have snapped a photo of them and posted it on the Hackney Mutual Aid Facebook group.

We continue walking and move on to discussing meditation practice. We’re talking about how to be open to what we can’t yet see or know. We explore the territory while sat at the reservoir looking out at the water. There are tiny little waves moving quickly across its surface.

I try to imagine what’s beneath the surface. How deep it goes and what kind of fish and other things might be down there. This is how to exercise the muscle of our imagination to cultivate and maintain a greater perspective.

After a little while we head back home. On the way we have to cross under train tracks. The underpass is covered in graffiti. I take a few pics. One wall is completely covered with the lines:

What is this life if full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

When I get home I look it up. It’s from a poem called Leisure by Welsh poet William Henry Davies about how there’s no time in modern life to enjoy nature.

Another wall reads:

Educate

Agitate

Isolate

I wonder what it means, to replace organize with isolate. Early on in the lockdown one of my fears was that governments around the world were going to use the pandemic as an excuse to squash political organizing and mass protests. It was no surprise to me when weeks later the UK parliament did just that, quietly passing the Emergency Coronavirus Act.

But I’d like to think there is a deeper meaning. Maybe it’s about isolating the problem. Getting down to the root of what ails us as a global society and calling it out loud and clear.

I walk my friend back to her flat and leave her at her front door. We talk about meeting up again and say good-bye.

When I get home I make myself some lunch and then spend the rest of the afternoon writing.

In the early evening I get on the phone with my friend in California who has just passed her exam and is now a registered dietitian. She has decided to move to Lake County and work for a a healthcare organisation specifically serving the local Native American community.

She’ll be living close to the retreat centre I was meant to be visiting for a month-long retreat this summer. We’re on FaceTime and I can see the tall, green trees all around her. I long to be immersed in that much natural beauty.

I can’t be bothered to cook dinner so while my partner prepares their usual kale with Mexican-style vegetables I order myself a pizza.

After eating we watch a couple of episodes of Little Fires Everywhere. It’s incredibly intense and a cringe-worthy social commentary on the white savior complex.

Reese Witherspoon’s character, Elena, seems one dimensional compared to most others in the show until the fourth episode when you start to see that she isn’t as squeaky clean as it appears.

Meanwhile, Kerry Washington’s character, Mia, is so multi-dimensional that you’re never sure what she’s going to do next, act with compassion or callousness.

Both performances are outstanding and that’s reason enough to keep watching. Especially since the whole show is a flashback from the first scene where Elena is stood on her front lawn watching her house engulfed in flames.

The burning question is, who did it? My guess is the answer is not as straightforward as one might assume.