Time and the Muse

 It's been a long time. A uniquely long time. I have been waiting for my Muse to show up for, well, over a year now. I have a feeling that she isn't going to. Let's just assume that she, like thousands and thousands, became a victim to Covid and either she died or she just ran out of the energy needed to get me moving, to restore my creative spirit and allow me to speak again.

Is she here now? I am figuring that she is still a "she".  If I may be so bold. I'm not going there. I just know she's a total she and will always be. But, I am not going there, remember?

We are now well into 2021. That seems more than remarkable to me and to the majority of people with whom I share my confusion. To some of us, it's scary to note that we're still thinking that it's 2019. We want to think it's 2019.  If we're over age 65, this kind of thinking is important to us. We lost a year. We can't really afford to lose time. The reality is that we don't have that much time ahead of us.

It's hard to write about anything beyond what has been the highlight of our existence since very early in 2020. For most of us, we rarely ventured beyond our front doors. We spent our days inside of a womb. The perimeters of our world shortened. We patiently waited for the back to work whistle, the signal that would tell it is was safe to come back out. Within our wombs, we created new ways to exist. New ways to communicate with others in their wombs. New things to cook, sew, knit, read, bake, grow, hear, smell, fix and view. It was new and somewhat exciting. For a while. And then, it became old, boring and very bad for us. We lost the joy of cooking. We became tired of the new paradigm. Our daily walks became boring and the routines that we had developed for what we thought would be a short haul, became drudgery as we realized that this was a longer haul than we had signed up for in the first place. There was nothing new or exciting out there to grab. 

I still find it hard to come up with new topics of conversation, in person, never mind in writing. My creative juices have not been flowing and I often wonder if I am the only one who is feeling that way. Am I alone in this void? And then I remind myself that to survive is to be creative. Pat myself on the back. So far, I have survived quite nicely. I have learned some new art-forms. The art of placing my needs in front of my wants. The art of dodging viral enemies and staying well. The art of appreciating my home, the time spent with my husband. The art of making a living space more livable. The art of accepting things the way they are and must be and accepting the me as I am and will be for however long that may be.

So, welcome back, dear Muse. Let's work together again, accepting each other for as long as that may be. We don't have time to lose and we're not going to waste too much more. 

Mourning

Over and over and over in my head, I keep trying to remind myself of the belief that I have and always have had, in the "reason-for-everything" theory.  I hold that nothing happens for nothing and that in this world, everything and everyone has a purpose.

Having said that, it still seems surreal and I still question the sad, sad, hard and unrelenting pieces of bad news that we are receiving daily, as being necessary steps to something beyond evil.

We're being tested.  We're becoming frightened.  We're entering a mourning period, one in which we see no end but we are all in it and there's no turning back. We've lost our closest friend.  Our freedom to move about in shared spaces, breathing air with which we feel safe, has been stripped away as in a sudden death.  We risk another great loss, the feeling of hope, the ability to plan beyond today.  Funny, we took that so for granted.

In 1969,  Swiss psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross first described the five stages of grief. The Grief Cycle. In her book On Death and Dying, she outlined the steps that humans take as they process loss, as they mourn and grieve for something or someone.  While it looks like a roadmap, based upon a flow from step to step at first, it is not intended as such and researchers over the years have been quick to point out that not everyone goes through the five steps in order and some actually skip steps along their way.

The stages described by Kubler-Ross are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.

Watching, reading and listening to the news from our country and abroad, I am sensing there are a lot of folks out there in the very first stage, denial.  The news clips from the beaches in Florida, for instance, show us hundreds of people who are clearly in denial, totally ignoring the social distancing recommendations.  Ignorance and denial are perfect buddies and together, we're seeing the result of their alliance.

Anger.  I don't know about you, but I am progressing rapidly to this stage.  I'm angry when I go to the supermarket, take all the necessary infection-control steps, and witness a smug woman of my own age, half-heartedly going through the motions as if she honestly thought it was all a figment of one's imagination, this rapidly spreading virus.  I almost clocked her but that would have meant a form of social contact and she really wasn't worth it. I'm angry at the greed.  Why are stores running out of toilet paper?  Greed?  The new social status game?  Bragging rights?  Does having a supply of toilet paper make you feel special?  If it does, I'm angry at you.

I'm not at the bargaining stage, at least not quite yet.  I'm not making promises to God in exchange for mercy.  I'm not taking risks nor am I risking anybody else's right to staying well.  And, I am certainly trying hard to not become depressed.  New forms of social contact, a good diet, exercise and remaining present in my life might help in that area.  Let's hope.

Acceptance?  Do we have a choice?

For more information:  https://www.psycom.net/depression.central.grief.html

AND:  As always, great information and perspectives from https://italywise.com/a-glimmer-of-hope-in-the-midst-of-the-coronavirus-crisis/