Photo: L. Weikel
Foul
The weather is turning as foul as predicted. Wind is whipping fat globs of rain and slush through the air like paintball pellets. Hearing the splatter on the windows as I sat down to write, I just realized I forgot to bring in my plants, the ones I’d recently allowed to spend some time outside, ‘on their own,’ encouraging them to reconnect with their feral roots.
OK, phew! I brought everything in. Wow, it’s nasty out there.
This Week
I’d like to welcome all of you to the weekend. It may not feel all that different from the days of the week that you just endured, but I think we all know, for most of us at least, there still remains a psychological difference. Old habits die hard.
And as I write, thunder rumbles.
Even though I love thunder and lightning, thunder can feel ominous – or perfectly in keeping with the milieu of the times. I must admit that’s how it feels at the moment: a perfect, ominous warning.
If anyone felt this week was particularly stressful, I want you to hear me: YOU ARE NOT ALONE! I don’t know if it was the full moon or the culmination of being on lockdown for almost two months, the relentless information, misinformation, lying, and scare tactics we’re bombarded with, or what it is. But this has been a week.
I’ve had a number of people tell me that they’re having trouble sleeping. Even if they succeed in falling asleep, they often find themselves dreaming copiously and restlessly, and often the dreams turn to nightmares.
Early Stretch
It sounds like a good portion of these dreams and nightmares are taking apocalyptic turns. Everything feels momentous these days. We really don’t know what’s coming at us from one day to the next, so it only stands to reason that we play out possible scenarios in our dreams.
Seriously: the mere word pandemic sounds like something that belongs in a Hollywood movie, not the past two months of our lives. And now, with this bizarre push to get the country back up and ‘running’ no matter the cost in human lives, we’re entering a new phase of a national nightmare.
We’ve only just begun learning how to deal with all of this. And yet, we’re almost getting whiplash, trying to keep track of whether ‘the worst is over’ or – more likely – the ‘worst’ has moved to other parts of the country where it appears honesty about testing and infection rates and deaths may not be the highest priority of those calling the shots.
False Sense of Security
My sense is that people all across the country have watched the way New York has handled the initial crush of cases, including the way Governor Cuomo has addressed his constituents (and the rest of the nation) each and every day with facts and emotional fortitude. On some level, even though many find it easy to judge the hell out of them, deep down, we all believe we’re New Yorkers. We felt that on 9/11 and we feel it now. We resonate with the attitude of “New York Tough.”
But I fear the success New York is having in meeting this challenge head-on is creating a false sense of security for the rest of the nation.
The push to get back to an illusory normal is almost certainly ill-advised, especially since the rest of the country (outside of maybe New York and New Jersey) have yet to reach their peak. I have a feeling many of us know that to be true on a visceral level. Much more loss is about to take place, and it’s the stuff of nightmares.
Honesty? Transparency?
And while we hope the governors of the states where numbers are starting to soar (when they deign to reveal those numbers – another tip off that ‘this is not New York’) will put their people first and give them every fact and number and piece of information that will help them make informed decisions for their health and that of their families, if we’re honest, we can see the writing on the wall.
The requisite honesty and transparency are profoundly and horrifyingly lacking.
Perhaps we need to give expression to the terror that courses through our body when we consider how fast and far the Coronavirus is spreading across the country, especially in our nursing and extended care facilities, prisons, and certain factory settings (such as meat packing plants), and other places of congregate living or working. We need to express it so we can release it.
And isn’t that really what this full moon is all about? Letting the light of the full moon shine upon our fears so we can identify them and let them go ?
The first responsibility is to be honest with ourselves. Then we can wake from our nightmares and prevail. Together.
Photo: L. Weikel
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