Elizabeth Adams's Blog, page 21

Hermit Diary 18: Cat

Our cat, unlike the 3.5 million human inhabitants of this city, thinks self-isolation is the best thing that ever happened. Her previous life at our studio meant that we were with her during the day, but not at night, and she was cared for by visitors during the times we were away, so she had to deal with a certain amount of anxiety: Are they really coming back? When? The rules were pretty lax at the studio, though: if she wanted to scratch things, she couldn’t really do much damage, and there was no point telling her she couldn’t get up on the tables and counters. The view from the windows, onto a major north-south street that carries a lot of traffic, was not exciting. Aside from new contributions to her food bowl, the high points of her day were when we’d occasionally take naps on the sofa, or play with her with a string on a stick, and she spent large parts of her time curled up near us, or sitting in our laps as we worked. In the twelve years since she’s lived with us, she’s never broken anything; the worst thing she’s done is to destroy one corner of my upholstered piano bench.

When we moved her here, to our apartment, we expected a long traumatic adjustment. Instead, she did a half-hour reconnaissance of the entire place, and then settled down in a soft chair we’d covered with a fleece throw and started grooming herself. It’s still her preferred spot for afternoon sleeping, but she’s also claimed a corner of the sofa and our entire bed, preferably when our clothes or nightshirts are on it. During the night, she spends part of her time sleeping on J’s back or my hip, if she can, or curled up next to my side or between our heads. This has taken some getting-used to, on our parts, but she seems to be in a state of complete bliss: They're here all the time! They never leave! I get to sleep with them!

We were pretty sure she’d sink her claws into the velveteen sofa, and we were right. She looks with disdain at the scratching post we installed nearby, in spite of catnip sprays, and so we covered the most scratch-worthy parts of the sofa with wide, clear double-stick tape, which seems to have been a deterrent. The main battleground has been the dining room table. We said a firm “no!” but the minute we turn our backs, or turn out the lights and go to bed, she’s on it. Don’t tell me to spray her with water; she’s smart enough never to get on the table when we’re in sight. One morning we realized she’d been digging in the French butter dish -- a beautiful ceramic bowl with lid made by a late friend of ours -- that we’d left uncovered on the table. So we were careful to cover it after that. All seemed fine until a day ago, at 3:00 am, when J. awoke to a crash.

The butter dish was in pieces on the floor, Manon cowering under the table; she fled when he appeared and hid from him for almost a whole day afterward. I gathered the pieces, on hands and knees, and fitted them together; the lid was too smashed to repair, but the bowl seemed possible. Today I got out the super glue and carefully cemented the small pieces, managing to avoid sticking my fingers together or getting stuck to the pot, but somehow covering three of my fingertips with glue. As I type, I have the odd sensation that my fingertips are wrapped in plastic; I suppose it will wear off eventually.

We’re hoping we can continue to remember that there’s a cat in the house when we open the sliding glass doors onto the terrace, since beyond it is a street that will one day become busy again. She’s hoping we’ll forget; she now has a ringside seat for people-watching on the street, and sparrow-hopping in the hedge: I put bread out for the birds today mainly to entertain her, but she'd much rather be out there stalking them. During long sessions of claiming her place on our chests, in an incessant kneading of paws, she purrs so loudly and for so long I’d think she’d faint from exhaustion. Every now and then she looks at me with a gaze, more curious and grateful than reproachful, that seems to ask, “What took you so long?” and I have to admit I wonder the same thing.

Hermit Diary 17: Steadfast Love

Cross-posted from the Daily Bread blog at Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal.

Well, here we are on Tuesday in Easter week, and though I know that Easter arrived on Sunday, somehow it feels like we’re still in an in-between place, more like Holy Saturday than the joyous, springlike, hope-filled Easters I remember from more than sixty years of life. I loved our worship on Sunday morning, many of us wearing flowered prints, pastel ties, spring-like colors, and even a hat or two. As cheerful as we were, and glad to be “together”, I think we all felt the absence not just of the Eucharist, each other’s physical presence, the choir and trumpets, the flowers and cakes, but of that sense of a completed journey that Easter usually brings. We don’t know what the next weeks and months will hold. We don’t know how long we’ll be in this suspended state of place and time. We don’t know how long we’ll be worried about what may happen to us, to our loved ones, to our finances and even to our beloved cathedral before this situation resolves.

Psalm 103, appointed for Morning Prayer today, is a hymn of thanksgiving for recovery from sickness. It begins:

Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name.
Bless the Lord O my soul,
and do not forget all his benefits —
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases

Those lines are surely what we long for, but today they still feel somehow… premature. When we look back at the psalm that comes just before this one, Psalm 102, we find the prayer of someone who is ill and afflicted. These familiar Lenten phrases formed the basis for some of Henry Purcell’s and Richard Farrant’s most memorable music, which we always sing during Lent:

Hear my prayer O Lord,
and let my cry come unto thee.
Do not hide your face from me,
in the day of my distress.

and it goes on:

For my days pass away like smoke
and my bones burn like a furnace
My heart is stricken and withered like grass
I am too wasted to eat my bread.

Yes, we can identify with that. So, are we still there, with the stricken psalmist, or has Easter come and filled us with hope? Or are we perhaps teetering between these two poles of plead-ing and thanksgiving, expressed so well by Psalms 102 and 103?

It’s impossible to ignore the reality in which we’re living. The mother of a friend died from the virus here in Quebec on Saturday. We’ve seen unforgettable images of hundreds of coffins be-ing buried in trenches in New York City, that hub of energy and life. Jesus died on a cross. Young refugees are dying in migrant camps. None of these things should have happened, and yet they have, and continue to happen now.

I’ve been haunted by the photographs of Pope Francis, praying alone at night in a deserted St. Peter’s Square. I’ve been in that vast space, waiting with thousands of other visitors to enter the basilica; it’s hard to imagine it empty. Somehow the desolation and poignant loneliness of that image encapsulated the spiritual question many must be asking: if there is a God, how can (s)he permit this amount of suffering? During times of war, people of opposing factions pray opposing prayers. But right now, the entire world is united in wanting this virus to end, and for lives to be spared. The emptiness of that square in Rome seemed, to me, to ask, Where is God in this crisis, and is (s)he listening to us at all?

I went back to Psalm 103 — the thanksgiving psalm — looking for answers.

Throughout, the psalmist speaks of God’s compassion and mercy, his slowness to anger, his forgiveness. No less than four times, we encounter the phrase “his steadfast love.” And this steadfast love is contrasted with the fleeting lives of human beings:

As for mortals, their days are like grass;
they flourish like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
But the steadfast love of the Lord
is from everlasting to everlasting…

It seems to me that this is what we must pray for: to be, during our finite lives on earth, an embodiment of God’s steadfast love. It’s what Jesus asked of us at the Last Supper, in his final message to his disciples: “love one another as I have loved you.”

Steadfast love is what I saw in the faces of our community gathered on a Zoom screen on East-er morning. And steadfast love also reminds me of Easters past, and the faces of my family and friends, many of whom are gone now, but who lived that phrase out in their own lives. Love for each other in the face of difficulty, love at the foot of the cross and at the tomb, love regardless of the difficulties, pain, and uncertainty of this particular time, and love that looks forward to spring, renewal, and resurrection, not just in the future, but every day.

Hermit Diary 16: Easter Day

The sun is shining here in Montreal, even though it's chilly, and we just finished attending a virtual Easter service at the cathedral, where the clergy and music director have worked hard all week to keep some continuity with our Anglican traditions for Holy Week while embracing the new technology. Oddly enough, I think we've sometimes had a greater sense of community than usual, being able to see a grid of live faces (rather than the backs of heads in the pews) on our Zoom screens and enjoy a virtual "coffee hour" after the services when we can talk in small groups or as a whole.

Yesterday I baked Greek Easter bread, with orange peel, chocolate, and almonds, and it filled the apartment with fragrance. I'm feeling a renewed sense of energy and purpose, so perhaps I'll be able to do some more drawing and writing, but I'm also feeling grateful for the opening up of time to simply be, and think, at a much slower pace than before. The anxiety and uncertainty I felt during the first week or two has been replaced by an odd new normalcy; we know what we can do and what we can't, we know how to get some exercise, how to deal with our food, how to communicate with friends and family, what the days feel like. We're still adjusting to living full time with our cat, and to having her walk on us during the night, or wake with her little face an inch away from our own: that is mostly a delight.

Sadly, the mother of one of our dear friends died yesterday from the virus. She was living in an extended care facility, and in Montreal, as in many other places, this is where the most cases and the greatest number of deaths have occurred. Over the weeks to come, we will all know more people who succumb. At the same time, spring is arriving in the northeast, with its promise of hope and renewal. What a strange time we are living! I find when I can step back from my own concerns and enter the mystery, challenge, and opportunity of it, something opens inside me, and both anxiety and impatience depart. We are living in a rare in-between space, and we are being called, I think, to pay close attention.

I send love to all of you who read here.

 

Hermit Diary 15: Masking and Unmasking - Holy Week 2020

I’ve been making masks this week. The sewing machine and ironing board took over the living room and dining table, along with bags of fabric, spools of wire, and thread, and elastic. Sewing is almost always a pleasure for me, and I tried to make it so this time, but I’ve never sewn something for such an ominous purpose. Underneath the cheerful bright fabrics lurked the searing images we’ve received this week from New York City, the UK, Europe, Africa, India. Images of human beings trying to protect themselves and others, often with the flimsiest of barriers between the invisible but potentially deadly: my breath, your breath.

This is also Holy Week, the solemn culmination of the reflective, penitential season of Lent. A season that got blindsided by a worldwide pandemic that seems nothing if not Biblical, forcing the religious and non-religious alike to give at least a passing thought to the questions, “What is going on? Why now? Why us?” The past two months have presented all of us with images and descriptions of suffering we will never, ever forget, if in fact we are fortunate enough to survive. One iconic image of this pandemic will certainly be the mask, and, if we are willing to look closer, at the eyes above it, filled with fear, exhaustion, and too much knowing.

Lent, and the journey of Holy Week in particular, is a time for Christians to face ourselves with as much honesty as possible. A time to unmask, to look within, to admit our shortcomings, to see how we can perhaps do better, and summon the courage and determination to actually do so. My own response to Holy Week always varies, and I can never quite predict how it's going to hit me. Sometimes I fight against it, feeling too weak or too belabored to be immersed in such a depressing narrative. I'm often angry at the way the story is interpreted, rejecting the evangelical notion of being "saved by the cross" and the atonement theology the Church has laid on this very human, very political story of an innocent man unjustly accused, condemned, and cruelly executed by the authoritarian powers who were threatened by his message of justice, love, inclusivity, and freedom. Other years I am swept away by it, unbothered by the parts I cannot accept, caught up in the parallels between then and now, deeply moved by the liturgies and music, willing to face the questions about human responsibility that I believe it asks of me. Occasionally, if I am able to stay within that meditative and receptive space, new insight comes. The mask with which I protect myself, the mask I always wear and present to the world, falls away, and a new face is revealed: vulnerable, expectant, grateful, willing and ready for change.

We’re all on such a journey right now, whether we are religious or not. Before we get to spring, before we get to resurrection and renewal, we are on an extremely slow, collective journey where the fundamental fact is death, and we are being forced to stop and look at it. Death stares back at us, and we tremble because we know that -- whether tomorrow or years from now -- it eventually comes for us all. But can we also fail to be humbled by the eyes that look out at us from the masked faces of the health care workers, the delivery people, the transit drivers, the janitors, the grocery clerks who continue to risk their lives on our behalf, while we shelter in our homes -- or to be humbled by the unprotected faces of the poor?

Most of us are unmasked by this experience: our leaders cannot hide their priorities and true natures -- some for better and some for worse -- and neither can we. But the question asked by Holy Week, as well as by the present situation, is not what we will do with death, when it comes, but what we will do with our lives in the midst of the uncertainty, injustice, and selfishness that are actually always with us: today, tomorrow, and every day we are here on earth. For a brief span, our masks are off, everywhere. What will we choose?

 

Hermit Diary 14: The Chaos of the Moment

We are all trying to adjust to the reality of this extraordinary moment in history, and in our personal lives. Some people seem to be adjusting faster, some slower, some barely at all. It's difficult for everyone. Let us be gentle with ourselves, and with others, as we navigate this thicket of fears, uncertainties, and complexities we never expected.

For some of us, Holy Week has begun. It's going to be quite strange. I found this essay quite helpful: "A First for Christendom: Holy Week without Church," by Stephen Cottrell, an Anglican bishop in the UK, who writes, "Who would have thought that this Lent we would have to give up each other?"

May peace be in your hearts, even as the world around us seems anything but peaceful, ordered, or even understandable, and may we find beauty in that chaos.

 

The Chaos of the Moment

We are all trying to adjust to the reality of this extraordinary moment in history, and in our personal lives. Some people seem to be adjusting faster, some slower, some barely at all. It's difficult for everyone. Let us be gentle with ourselves, and with others, as we navigate this thicket of fears, uncertainties, and complexities we never expected.

For some of us, Holy Week has begun. It's going to be quite strange. I found this essay quite helpful: "A First for Christendom: Holy Week without Church," by Stephen Cottrell, an Anglican bishop in the UK, who writes, "Who would have thought that this Lent we would have to give up each other?"

May peace be in your hearts, even as the world around us seems anything but peaceful, ordered, or even understandable, and may we find beauty in that chaos.

 

Hermit Diary, Montreal. 13. My Life Right Now

Desk. Pen and ink on paper, 9" x 6".

Hermit Diary, Montreal. 12. The Spice Cabinet

I don't know if "corona-guilt" has become a catch-phrase yet, but there's plenty of it going around. Faced with these vast expanses of time and solitude, we're supposed to write novels and compose music, establish yoga and meditation practices, communicate effectively with everyone we ever knew, become bread-bakers and sweater-knitters and Great-Book-readers, and finally tackle all the leaky faucets and crammed closets -- not to mention the interior organization of our computers -- that we've put off forever with the happy excuse, "Oh, I'm too busy." Every day isn't Groundhog Day, but instead it's an endless succession of January 1sts, with lists of New Year's resolutions staring us in the face, day after day. Worse yet, with all this communicating, and everyone asking each other, "what did you do today?" it's hard to hide the fact that most of us have been so blindsided by this thing that we've gotten very little done, and suspect that we may continue that way for a long time.

So far, I'm no different: other than these blog posts, I've barely drawn or sewn or done any of the things that first came to mind as possibilities. I've spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get our food delivery together; that's been a priority and it hasn't been easy. But the other preoccupation has been our living space. J. and I live in a very small apartment, and after closing our studio and bringing the cat and a bunch of work-supplies home with us, we've had no choice but to try to better organize our space. There are still boxes and bags and storage bins stacked on the floor and in the hallway, awaiting further resolution, but we've managed to do quite a lot. We installed a new kitchen light, and cleaned the stove and fridge and kitchen walls; every inch of valuable closet space has been reorganized and a lot of things thrown away or recycled. Part of this is practical, but another part is psychological and relational. Things we barely noticed have suddenly become sources of annoyance as we both use our shared spaces more -- shall we say -- intensively. Rather than getting worked up or defensive, as we once might have, the very act of cleaning, organizing, and fixing has been a source of considerable psychological comfort -- I'm doing something for myself, but also for him, and vice-versa.

Yesterday, after J. announced he couldn't find anything in it, I tackled the spice cabinet. The small space you see in the picture above was overflowing with bottles and boxes, tins and packets; I don't think I'd given it a real overhaul since we moved to Montreal more than a decade ago. I knew what was in there, but nobody else could have, since nothing was labeled. In another cabinet, below, were three plastic boxes filled with whatever wouldn't fit into the designated cabinet itself: one labeled "seeds", one for "spices," loosely defined, and one for "leafy herbs" -- but they had all become mixed up, and filled with small plastic bags from Montreal's spice stores, or ziplocs full of dried herbs from my window boxes and pots, plus little clear plastic containers in various shapes, as well as round and square tins, some full, some nearly empty. And besides all this, there was a large beige sac with bay leaves and oregano bought in an Athens market; tzatziki mix and cumin seeds from Catania; and a red plastic mercado sac full of various ground chilis from Mexico.

The task of organizing all of this didn't really take that long, just a few hours. I emptied all the cabinets and boxes; threw away everything old, duplicated, or unidentifiable; washed out the good containers, consolidated and refilled them; made labels. It was a small, manageable task, with an end in sight, and the only disaster was when I spilled a broken packet of Persian saffron onto the counter, and had to carefully gather up every tiny, dark gold stamen before doing anything else.

Cleaning is what I do when everything else feels out of control. My parents used to ride on me unmercifully for my reluctance to clean my desk, my room, my dresser drawers -- I always had something more compelling to do, and it just didn't feel important; besides, *I* knew where everything was. Oddly, once I had my own spaces and shared them with a partner, I got neater -- though there have always been neglected areas. But when unhappiness or chaos or uncertainty seep into my world, I've noticed that I instinctively look for things to do that feel ordered, methodical, and incremental: making a patchwork quilt, knitting stitch after stitch, practicing music or a language, following a complicated recipe, taking the food out of the fridge and scrubbing the shelves. There's a quiet satisfaction today in opening the door to the spice cabinet and seeing the neatly-labeled jars and tins; maybe today I'll do another drawer of my desk. It's all easier than staring at a blank screen, wondering what I can possibly write to make sense of this thing that's happening to all of us -- but, ironically, that time spent doing mundane tasks is when the ideas come, and I've learned to trust that, too.

Hermit Diary, Montreal. 11. What to say?

Olive prunings, Roman Forum, Rome, Italy.

 

Writers write.

At the beginning of March, when we cancelled our trip and it became clear that the virus was coming to North America, it was natural that I -- like so many others -- would turn to the written word as a way to think about, work through, and share my experiences. I began on the following Monday, March 8: "So I thought maybe I'd keep a diary of these unusual days." I kept it up daily for a week or so, and was surprised by the number of comments and the amount of traffic on my blog, greater than it's been for years. I was happy to hear from thoughtful friends and former bloggers who were coming out of the woodwork, and dusting off their literary chops. And of course, on social media and in the news, the torrent of online words became unrelenting. I began to question myself, and what had felt facile for those first days became considerably harder. A few others were having similar thoughts; here's an entry from Nick Cave's Red Hand Files that expressed what I was feeling:

"The Red Hand Files has always been a space in which I could offer dubious existential notions, religious meditations, unsound advice, millennial senilities and general annoyances, while hopefully simultaneously extending a little human kindness and compassion. However, these sorts of ruminations came from a more privileged and fortunate time, when we had the oxygen to muse and to play. Things have changed, we are faced with a common enemy — impartial, unfeeling and of immeasurable magnitude — and it is no longer a time for abstractions. Now is the time to be cautious with our words, our opinions."

"Now is the time to be cautious with our words, our opinions." Twenty days have passed now since I began writing, and the gravity of the situation is such that I cringe at the casualness of those first words: "I thought maybe I'd keep a diary..."  What, indeed, can I say, can any of us say? And yet there are plenty of people, most notably in the U.S., who still don't get it, who are ignoring the science, and arguing about things that don't matter and ignoring things that are literally a matter of life and death. They are not just the leaders, but ordinary people too. And all the while, in places closer and closer to home, the bodies pile up, like the facts that we are beginning to understand about this virus, which will one day come together into a solution for this particular threat. Heroes, both likely and unlikely, emerge. Every one of us, no matter how limited by isolation, fitness, or age, is presented with opportunities to be of service to others. But the looming question is what we will learn in a larger sense: as the human race, and societies, and as individuals.

The most-read article in The Guardian today is a letter from Italian novelist Francesca Melandri to her fellow Europeans, and to the United Kingdom. In it she says "we were just like you," and traces the pattern I've alluded to here: the progression from the arguments between those who say "it's just like the flu" to those who know it's not, to the early novelty of self-isolation, the focus on food, the fleeting attraction of apocalyptic books and films, the obsessive fascination with online connection and video meetups, the online fitness workouts and virtual cocktail hours, the fights with our elders to try to get them to stay home, the ways we buoy each other with songs from balconies and rooftops, the dark humor, the growing awareness of domestic abuse and the divisions of class -- and the gradual falling away of the superfluous and superficial, the transparency of our friends' and families' behavior, the sleeplessness and anxiety, and the sense that nothing is going to be the same ever again.

So, yes, writers write, some better than others.

The advice I'm giving myself today, from decades of writing and editing, and after thinking about the words of Cave and Melandri and others, is: write what you know, and then ask yourself if it feels necessary to say out loud.

Sometimes the best thing a writer can do is listen.

Hermit Diary, Montreal. 10. Grief, Resistance, Acceptance.

A number of years ago, when I was talking about the grief and anger I was experiencing when my mother was ill and dying, a wise person told me, "It's our resistance to what is that always causes the most pain." I'd never thought of that before, and it immediately struck me as true. First of all, that's exactly what I was doing -- I was trying to put everything back into a box labelled "Before." In my experience since, this remark about resistance has continued to be true. When we resist the situation in which we find ourselves, and try to make things go back to "normal" -- when "normal" is what we're wishing for, and it doesn't or can't happen -- we feel a lot of pain that comes out in a variety of ways. But when we can move toward accepting things as they are, and stop trying to insist that they change, suddenly there's some openness and softness in what felt like a hard, fixed, frightening trap. We begin to see what we can control or change, alongside that which we can't, and we also begin to see some new possibilities about how to engage with the present and the uncertain future.

I've lived through a number of personal crises, and political/national times of war, tension, and uncertainty. But I've never experienced something like the present. It's hard. There's a state of dread as we watch the case counts rise, and I feel enormous grief at the suffering the world is going through. I'm literally enraged at leaders and parties who refuse to listen to science and reason, and who care more about wealth and the economy than people's lives -- which makes me angry all over again at the people who elected them. That anger has made me pretty cranky sometimes, which I'm trying to notice and overcome, occasionally with limited success. I'm appalled at some of the cruel comments about older people that I've read on social media and in the news. And I simply fail to understand how some people in all of our communities can be in such denial of reality, or so selfish as to put others at grave risk, even though I understand the characteristics and beliefs that make people that way. Finally, because my husband has an immune issue, I'm trying to make sure I've done enough to disinfect whatever enters the apartment, from the grocery delivery to my own hands when I've gone to the basement with the recycling. It's stressful.

None of those negative emotions do any good, frankly. I've tried to turn my annoyance and fear about other people into action; I've written to the mayor's office several times about situations observed here in Montreal, and received quick, satisfactory answers that were followed up: for instance, the large children's playground nearby was being used by several clueless families on Saturday; now it's closed and has police tape around it, along with all the other public playgrounds in the city. Not my doing, I'm sure, but I know from the reply I received that my letter was read. For my own sanity, I'm trying to limit my time on social media and news-reading while staying informed. Fortunately, we're quite contented being here, engrossed in things we like to do. I remind myself that what we're doing -- staying in, not seeing others, washing our hands, getting groceries delivered, washing produce, disinfecting hard surfaces -- is following the best advice we've got. Each week, we get more used to doing things this new way, and it feels less strange.

Beyond that, it's a time to keep busy, to check in with others, to reach out when we feel weak as well as when we feel strong, and find and share the beauty that still exists everywhere. On my short walk yesterday morning, the sky was blue, the snow brilliant white, and I stopped to watch three large flocks of Canada geese flying overhead. Spring is coming, time's moving forward.

It's unlikely we'll ever go back to what was once "normal". Moving through this over the weeks and months ahead is going to take courage as well as patience, and cost us dearly in innumerable ways. But we can either ride that road rigidly, and feel every single bump, or we can let go of a little of our resistance, and soften into what is, and the journey will be easier not only on us, but on the people around us. It's also important not to be too hard on ourselves. This is rough. We're all going to fall apart sometimes, lose our tempers or patience, confront a sudden wave of anxiety. It's OK. The next breath, the next hour, the next day are all fresh chances to begin again.

Illustration: Grave stele, 5th C BC, National Archaeological Museum, Athens