Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 52

I get up and put the kettle on. As it starts hissing, a memory flashes before my eyes. It’s from about a year ago. I’m standing in a friend’s kitchen in the bleary morning light. She’s got this bright red, fancy kettle. Its on of those kind that allow you to adjust the water temperature.

This is important for coffee. It should ideally be brewed at 80 degrees. At that thought, I lift the kettle before it comes to a full boil. I start pouring water into my AeroPress while remembering a bit more about my friend and her kettle.

It’s weird that she has such a fancy kettle. She lives very simply. In a tiny annex attached to a much bigger house on the coast of northwest Wales. She explains to me that when another friend came to stay in her annex he bought her the kettle.

He, like me, is a coffee snob.

While drinking my coffee Facebook reminds me that on this day last year I visited that very friend in northwest Wales. Photos of the visit immediately bring back more memories.

Strange how our internal clocks work, fleeting impressions of past experiences flashing up and aligning with the planet’s rotation.

She had picked me up from a retreat I’d been leading in the area. I was to spend the weekend with her before carrying on to Manchester for a meeting.

She lives on a peninsula that sticks out into Cardigan Bay, just across the estuary from Porthmadog. Her place faces north, with stunning views from the front porch of the main house. To the right, Snowdonia, to the left the estuary opening out into the bay, and then wide, open sea.

The changing tides in the estuary create a magical display of shifting colours, shadows and light as water ebbs and flows. The brown and beige sandbars gradually emerge from beneath silvery, shimmering pools that reflect the changing sky above, before slowly disappearing again.

On my first afternoon she suggests a walk to Portmeirion on the south side of the peninsula. It’s part old, Italian village, part movie set, part tourist attraction designed as an architectural experiment in 1925 and built over the next 50 years.

I ask how much it costs to get in. My friend looks at me with a twinkle in her eye. Instead of buying tickets, we’re going to walk the full length of the peninsula to its very tip and jump the wall.

“How will we get back home?” I ask.

“We’ll simply walk straight out the front gates,” she says.

She grabs a pair of shears and we head out the door. We walk through dense forest, my friend periodically cutting back the overgrowth, until we reach a grassy, wide open clifftop. We sit on some rocks and take in the view while she tells me about a good friend who once lived nearby but has since died of cancer.

After a little while, we carry on until we reach the stone “wall”. It is so neglected that it’s less like jumping it and more a simple scramble. They are clearly not worried about people sneaking in from here.

We emerge into a wood of ancient rhododendron trees, purple petals carpeting the forest floor and old tendrils twisting their way from earth to sky, reaching for the light. We start seeing signs for the village as the paths get wider and more heavily trodden. The wild wood transforming into well-manicured gardens.

We wander through the village, which is a beautiful, strange in-between place where no one really lives and nothing ever happens. There are a handful of other “tourists” taking snapshots and eating ice-cream, looking around as if waiting for actors to appear.

 At the end of our wanderings we walk straight out the front gate, no problem.

I crack a smile while slowly sipping my morning brew, delighting in the memory of that late afternoon adventure with my friend, who’s as independent and rebellious as me but with 20 more years to show for it.

Soon it’s time to join the morning Zoom session. We’ve finally worked out my co-leader’s connection. She’s joining by video and calling in from her mobile for sound.

One participant keeps trying to join but it’s not working. Every time she enters the “waiting room” I click the “admit” button and just get a message saying:

Joining…

But she never appears. Fifteen minutes into the session, she finally gets in. She is clearly flustered. She’s been getting a message saying that the host will let her in soon.

Damn you passive-aggressive Zoom! Blaming me when it’s you that’s the problem.

I tell her I tried admitting her multiple times but it just didn’t work and must have been a connection problem.

My co-leader introduces loving-kindness practice. She’s talking about sweet peas, how wonderful they smell, which makes her happy. That by recalling their smell, her heart opens.

That makes me smile, thinking of a particularly poignant patch of sweet peas in a friend’s garden in Spain, imagining they must also be blooming now, even though she no longer lives there.

Afterwards everyone’s faces look softer, more open, especially the woman who struggled to join the class earlier. I breathe out a sigh of relief.

Later my co-leader sends us three more videos of spring in the Highlands of Scotland including swallows arriving, and images of trees with birdsong in the background.

I spend the rest of the morning catching up on email, which I am embarrassingly behind on. Then it’s time for lunch. We pack a picnic and head out the door, back to our favourite spot in Hackney Downs.

We cross the road and start walking in the direction of the park. A few doors down from ours, we see a man out the front of his house building something, a young woman sitting on the piling at the entrance to his garden, watching.

The man is wearing a face mask and goggles. Regardless, I recognise him immediately. It’s Christian and he’s looking up at us, eyes shining. We say hello and he removes the mask, to reveal the smile beneath.

He tells us he’s building a flower bed and plans to buy compost and plants from a local neighbor. I tell him I’ve been wanting to replant a few of my own window boxes and ask him to send me the neighbor’s contact details.

I tell him my upstairs neighbors are now ready for their photo shoot. He laughs, saying he’s noticed them on the doorstep. He had stopped by one afternoon and asked them if he could take their picture, but they’d seemed ambivalent.

I say I think now that they’ve seen our photo they’re reassured that he’s legit and they want to be famous too. He smiles widely and says he’ll definitely come by the next time he sees them on the doorstep.

We carry on to the park, settle into our spot and tuck into our salads. Then my partner wanders off to takes a work call while I nap. I’m lying on my stomach and can feel the sun on the soles of my feet as I drift off to sleep.

My partner wakes me and tells me it’s time to head home. We get back just in time for me to get on Zoom for our afternoon session. I say a bit more about loving-kindness practice and begin leading the meditation.

Just as I’m getting going, I hear the voices of my neighbors. They are hanging out on the doorstep. They are laughing and talking loudly, and more voices are joining them. It’s a party on the doorstep while I’m trying to lead meditation no less than 10 feet away.

Then I hear Christian’s voice. He’s come over to join the party and arrange to take their photos.

I have to smile at that. And at the role I’ve played in creating this situation. I’m leading loving kindness practice so my only choice is to direct loving kindness at my neighbors partying on the doorstep.

In between instructions I keep myself muted and tune into the energy of what is unfolding on the doorstep. They are enjoying themselves, each other and the sun. They sound relaxed and happy.

I sense that they have become accustomed to the new normal. So much so that perhaps they hope the lockdown will never end so they can be forever drinking wine in the sun on our doorstep.

After the session I get a voicemail from a friend. It’s her 58th birthday, she’s arranged a last-minute party this evening and hopes we can make it. She manages to invite us to a party on Zoom without ever mentioning Zoom but I know that that’s where the party will be.

I send her a text asking her to email us the link. We’ll join when we can.

My partner’s got counseling clients and I’m meant to be speaking to a friend in Vancouver. We eat a quick dinner and then they’re off into the bedroom and I’m left in the front room.

My friend in Vancouver tells me she’s been Zoombombed. She says it’s really unsettling. It reminds her of men who used to expose themselves from inside telephone boxes or moon you from the window of a car as they drove by.

We talk about doing some teaching together and cook up a plan to run an online retreat in June. I leave the call excited about the possibilities teaching on Zoom has opened up.

We join my friend’s birthday party. They are doing a quiz and then someone offers a song. She’s written it herself. It’s a love song to water. She sings it for us while playing her guitar and it’s beautiful.

We ask for another, and she offers us a modified version of Cat Stevens’ You Can Do What You Want.

You can do what you want

(except in lockdown)
The opportunity's on

(except on lockdown)
And if you find a new way
You can do it today
You can make it all true

(except in lockdown)
And you can make it undo

(except in lockdown)
You see, ah ah ah
It's easy, ah ah ah
You only need to know

It occurs to me that actually, since the beginning of lockdown, I’ve ended up doing a lot more of what I want. Things I kept putting off because of being too “busy”.

I’ve also been taking the opportunity to develop my online teaching, something I’d been thinking about for a long time but had not yet done much about.

Somehow, coronavirus has made it all true.