(Okay, let’s see if I can write this thing in under a half hour.)
My mother seemed always to be amazed at how quickly I did things.
“That would have taken me an hour, and you do it in five minutes.”
Of course, I loved that, and years of praise for my swiftness as a child ingrained habits of swiftness as an adult. I pride myself on being swift and on schedule. Of course I do, such identities don’t go away easily, but bodily reality slows me down, and a retiree’s schedule is highly theoretical.
Then came the lockdown. I wake earlier these days than has lately been my custom, but am still nervous about making it to the bar before Giancarlo runs out of strudel (even though he always saves me a piece) and onto the Anello before it’s too sunny on the section I walk (even in winter when sunshine is deliciously welcome). Then I look outside. Oh, right, lockdown. No bar, no strudel, no Anello, no direct sun, mitigated walk at best.
So, I drift downstairs and read, then meditate. Meditation, until three days ago, always involved a timer. I had things to do! People to see! Can’t sit around all day! (Not really, but dare I repeat myself – habit is stubborn.) Then I forgot to bring my phone downstairs one morning and thought, why time it? I’ve no need. So, I meditate as long as it seems right, and is almost always about as long as it would be using a timer. (And I do check.)
Then I fix breakfast, moving as fast as my nervous system will allow, sit with it before me on the table, review my words of thanks with my spoon hovering over the muesli, ready to pound it back into its bowl should it try to escape. Breathe. Appreciate. No where to go.
And so forth, throughout the day.
The biggest challenge in these circumstances of isolation is taking time as it comes, neither putting the next thing off, nor rushing into it. The uneasiness of living otherwise, even when in satisfying-schedules mode, is thrown into sharp and distinct relief.
I stayed home again, today. I’m well-provisioned, so there was no need to shop. I decided to forego the midday walk to see if that made a difference (it did, comfort level decidedly lower). I did work in the yard for two hours (timed it, too – checked the clock going out and coming in, as if I had to report it on my timecard). I saw my neighbor Patrizia on her balcony. We chatted for a bit (I’d estimate two minutes). Five and a half minutes later, Renzo’s face popped up on the other side of the garden wall; he was watering the pots of flowers he and other neighbors put up and maintain. We discussed the weather for fifty seconds. It was wonderful to see their fond faces. Two days of solitude is nothing for a cave-living hermit, but in a town that stakes its identity on its buzzing streets and busy eateries, it’s an unnaturally long time.
(How am I doing? Will I finish before my walk at ten?)
Daily, I live a bit further from the clock. Time is not the issue, we can experience nothing without it. It’s the obsessive measurement of time that begins to look hollow from this perspective. It took me two hours to clean the yard whether or not I checked the clock. I was no less tired knowing that, the yard was no more clean. All the two hours represent is a layer I insert between myself and the experience of cleaning – the subtext being, “It would have taken my mother two days. Aren’t I a swift little bugger?!”
Tomorrow I’ll make a list of ingredients I need for the zucchini soup, plan my route, and try to arrive at Metà around three, when it’s slow and there is no line. The whole town is in suspended isolation and there is still a slow time at the supermarket. Isn’t that amazing?
Time for my walk. (Made it!)
Erika’s route (with her dog, Teah) has not taken her past new children’s art, I’m sorry to say, so I put in a photo of my garden — as it was three years, six months, and eleven days ago.