Sunday 19 April 2020 - Morning
The Five Remembrances
Mornings are beautiful.
I know I like mornings any way, but they are - beautiful - right now. Golden hour sun brushing into the room, fresh and delicate. And so quiet! So quiet, but for the birds.
Wake up from a dream where mum had been diagnosed with COV, we had to really pressure her to take it seriously, make her isolate. The night before, I brushed up into lucidity, knew I was dreaming as I was dreaming, spiralled into a psychedelic-like whirlpool of visions and emotions, seeing mum and dad and sobbing and sobbing and sobbing that I couldn’t lose them, I couldn’t lose them.
I try to make time each day to chant the Five Remembrances:
I am subject to ageing. I cannot escape ageing
I am subject to illness. I cannot escape illness
One day I will die. I cannot escape death
Everyone and everything I love will change. I will be separated from them
The only real possessions are our actions. We cannot escape the consequences of our actions
—
Yesterday I intentionally took time out to ‘do buddhism’ for the day. I lasted until the afternoon - watching dharma talks on youtube, meditating, listening to buddhist podcasts. Yoga. Bringing it back to here, too now.
They say suffering arises in the spaces between the way the world is, and the way we wish it to be. Who ever would wish the world to be this way?
And yet, it is. And the mornings at least are beautiful. And mum and dad are still here, even tho one day they won’t be. I cannot escape death.
—
After the initial shock and the wave of new normal, there’s coming - in me - a slow, long ache of fear for the world ahead. The way pain comes first quick and sharp, then slow and dull. Reports of new outbreaks in China, reinfections in Korea - the places you’d hoped had it under control, that spread a kind of hope - suddenly now not so certain.
I read, yesterday, that food supplies would be under pressure because bees weren’t being moved to pollination sites. What a world we built, what a grand, dazzling world we built for ourselves.
You think - I think - ‘oh, but we’ll be alright, Europe will be alright’. Food will get expensive, maybe, but it’ll still be around. We won’t starve’. Tell me we won’t starve.
And no - and no, because there’s no use to such fear.
To think we were all so obsessed with Brexit these past few years - HAH! - events like this turn so much of the time before into farce. But still somehow - maddeningly, incomprehensibly - the UK Gov is saying we will not be applying for an extension to the leave EU date. The EU have said the offer is there, just ask. We still might die through pig-headedness. Or rather, more still. -even more, even more still, might die through pig headedness.
The death report yesterday was over 800, again. Taking care home deaths into account we’re over the 20,000 deaths they said would be a ‘win’ a few weeks back, when we first locked down. Hospitals are still not coping - not enough PPE and the government lie that we’re well equipped has finally collapsed, even they don’t say it any more. The pandemic doesn’t care, it doesn’t care for spin and opinion and political careers, or lives, or all the lives, the people dying alone, the goodbyes unsaid, the funerals not held.
—
I’ve been remembering, today; happier times. A not so good habit, we live now, not then.
But still. There was a quality to the light this morning which put me in mind of brunch with Phil, when we were getting to know each other. When he was strongly hinting we were dating and I was obstinately refusing to see it - god I was a fool.
No, not a fool. Just not ready. Not ready and it’s too late now, has been far too late for five years. Life only happens now.
But still. Living in Waterloo, coming to meet him in Borough - we went to a South American place, I’d been there with someone from work once on lunch, it had good reviews, the kind of place you do take someone when you want to show them somewhere nice, as always I did with Phil. Then the Gladstone - no longer the Gladstone, maybe even no longer a pub (how many pubs will there be after this? How many restaurants, cafes? What even is ‘after’, any more - this autumn? Next year? Five years?).
His photo is by the bay windows. I pick it up sometimes, still, wistfully hold him to my chest, and wonder what he’d have made of the world since he was forced out too soon. Brexit, Trump. Now this, now this, the whole world coming unstuck and sticking up.
Something in the quality of the light, reminding me of brunch with Phil, and so much simpler times. I may have been depressed but the world was fine, the world was fine (tho I wasn’t depressed, at that particular time - I was glitteringly happy, a kind of spring-in-my-step joyful which I now understand as maybe a mild mania, induced by the SSRIs).
And now I’m not depressed - I’ve found peace, found buddha, and the world is falling apart. Ah, the world is always falling apart, says buddha. It just doesn’t always seem so.
Everything and everyone you love will change. You cannot escape death.
—
Not just Phil, not even just London - yesterday I noticed in me a remembrance of Leeds, of my student days, in a way I’d not thought of them for a while, a fullness and detail I’d not had for a long long time; my 23rd birthday on a stag do in Edinburgh, walking alone in the pouring rain and barely any money - but enough for a shortbread in a Starbucks, finally, to try to dry off. And… oh, I don’t know. Headingley, nights out at Federation, Caro and, and just being young, being young in the world.
I should get in touch with Caro.
I think, as well as the uncertainty and the global stress, I’m beginning to feel the lack of touch. I just want to hold and be held. It’s been so long since I felt even a friendly hug, and how much longer will it be?
It probably ends up affecting you, hormonally neurologically, the oxytocin dropping and cortisol rising.
Remember you used to be a neuroscientist, Phil?
God, god what another life, what another world.
—
I want to housing market to crash, property prices to collapse, and then I can move back to London and back to before, except it won’t be the London of 2008, where I can go for a drink at the Gladstone with Phil. The pub has closed and the friend has died. And all the world, all the world has changed.
And what else did I expect? Everything and everyone I love will change. I will be separated from them.
The morning is beautiful.
The Five Remembrances
Mornings are beautiful.
I know I like mornings any way, but they are - beautiful - right now. Golden hour sun brushing into the room, fresh and delicate. And so quiet! So quiet, but for the birds.
Wake up from a dream where mum had been diagnosed with COV, we had to really pressure her to take it seriously, make her isolate. The night before, I brushed up into lucidity, knew I was dreaming as I was dreaming, spiralled into a psychedelic-like whirlpool of visions and emotions, seeing mum and dad and sobbing and sobbing and sobbing that I couldn’t lose them, I couldn’t lose them.
I try to make time each day to chant the Five Remembrances:
I am subject to ageing. I cannot escape ageing
I am subject to illness. I cannot escape illness
One day I will die. I cannot escape death
Everyone and everything I love will change. I will be separated from them
The only real possessions are our actions. We cannot escape the consequences of our actions
—
Yesterday I intentionally took time out to ‘do buddhism’ for the day. I lasted until the afternoon - watching dharma talks on youtube, meditating, listening to buddhist podcasts. Yoga. Bringing it back to here, too now.
They say suffering arises in the spaces between the way the world is, and the way we wish it to be. Who ever would wish the world to be this way?
And yet, it is. And the mornings at least are beautiful. And mum and dad are still here, even tho one day they won’t be. I cannot escape death.
—
After the initial shock and the wave of new normal, there’s coming - in me - a slow, long ache of fear for the world ahead. The way pain comes first quick and sharp, then slow and dull. Reports of new outbreaks in China, reinfections in Korea - the places you’d hoped had it under control, that spread a kind of hope - suddenly now not so certain.
I read, yesterday, that food supplies would be under pressure because bees weren’t being moved to pollination sites. What a world we built, what a grand, dazzling world we built for ourselves.
You think - I think - ‘oh, but we’ll be alright, Europe will be alright’. Food will get expensive, maybe, but it’ll still be around. We won’t starve’. Tell me we won’t starve.
And no - and no, because there’s no use to such fear.
To think we were all so obsessed with Brexit these past few years - HAH! - events like this turn so much of the time before into farce. But still somehow - maddeningly, incomprehensibly - the UK Gov is saying we will not be applying for an extension to the leave EU date. The EU have said the offer is there, just ask. We still might die through pig-headedness. Or rather, more still. -even more, even more still, might die through pig headedness.
The death report yesterday was over 800, again. Taking care home deaths into account we’re over the 20,000 deaths they said would be a ‘win’ a few weeks back, when we first locked down. Hospitals are still not coping - not enough PPE and the government lie that we’re well equipped has finally collapsed, even they don’t say it any more. The pandemic doesn’t care, it doesn’t care for spin and opinion and political careers, or lives, or all the lives, the people dying alone, the goodbyes unsaid, the funerals not held.
—
I’ve been remembering, today; happier times. A not so good habit, we live now, not then.
But still. There was a quality to the light this morning which put me in mind of brunch with Phil, when we were getting to know each other. When he was strongly hinting we were dating and I was obstinately refusing to see it - god I was a fool.
No, not a fool. Just not ready. Not ready and it’s too late now, has been far too late for five years. Life only happens now.
But still. Living in Waterloo, coming to meet him in Borough - we went to a South American place, I’d been there with someone from work once on lunch, it had good reviews, the kind of place you do take someone when you want to show them somewhere nice, as always I did with Phil. Then the Gladstone - no longer the Gladstone, maybe even no longer a pub (how many pubs will there be after this? How many restaurants, cafes? What even is ‘after’, any more - this autumn? Next year? Five years?).
His photo is by the bay windows. I pick it up sometimes, still, wistfully hold him to my chest, and wonder what he’d have made of the world since he was forced out too soon. Brexit, Trump. Now this, now this, the whole world coming unstuck and sticking up.
Something in the quality of the light, reminding me of brunch with Phil, and so much simpler times. I may have been depressed but the world was fine, the world was fine (tho I wasn’t depressed, at that particular time - I was glitteringly happy, a kind of spring-in-my-step joyful which I now understand as maybe a mild mania, induced by the SSRIs).
And now I’m not depressed - I’ve found peace, found buddha, and the world is falling apart. Ah, the world is always falling apart, says buddha. It just doesn’t always seem so.
Everything and everyone you love will change. You cannot escape death.
—
Not just Phil, not even just London - yesterday I noticed in me a remembrance of Leeds, of my student days, in a way I’d not thought of them for a while, a fullness and detail I’d not had for a long long time; my 23rd birthday on a stag do in Edinburgh, walking alone in the pouring rain and barely any money - but enough for a shortbread in a Starbucks, finally, to try to dry off. And… oh, I don’t know. Headingley, nights out at Federation, Caro and, and just being young, being young in the world.
I should get in touch with Caro.
I think, as well as the uncertainty and the global stress, I’m beginning to feel the lack of touch. I just want to hold and be held. It’s been so long since I felt even a friendly hug, and how much longer will it be?
It probably ends up affecting you, hormonally neurologically, the oxytocin dropping and cortisol rising.
Remember you used to be a neuroscientist, Phil?
God, god what another life, what another world.
—
I want to housing market to crash, property prices to collapse, and then I can move back to London and back to before, except it won’t be the London of 2008, where I can go for a drink at the Gladstone with Phil. The pub has closed and the friend has died. And all the world, all the world has changed.
And what else did I expect? Everything and everyone I love will change. I will be separated from them.
The morning is beautiful.