I have been pining for a nice, solid, meandering day. A day
where I might drop in at my friend Kate’s store (Stillpoint Gallery) and browse
around touching things. I bet I’d pick up at least four different pieces of
pottery, ooh and ah, put them down, and go find something else to fondle.
Scarves, maybe. I would definitely linger by the jewelry counter, probably trap
poor Kate and ask to try on bracelets. We might catch up a bit, my elbows would
definitely come to rest in a repose of counter-leaning and moving nowhere fast.
Half-hour, 45 minutes later, I’d toodle out, back to my car, inspired to run up
to TJ Maxx for a really nice rummage. Then I could pop into the Wine
Spot and chit chat about trying some bottle of wine and have the helper tell me
all sorts of things that I absolutely will not remember once I get it home. And
even if I like it, I won’t have trained myself to remember the name of it
before plopping it in into the recycle bin and losing it forever.
Aaah, but the cherry on top would be a really nice lollygag
at the pub, or ooh, even better, a loungy night on a patio now that the weather
is warm. Yum, those twinkly little lights they always string up … and if it’s
L’Albatros I’d have a big martini and we would just ooh and ah over our
charceuterie plate, and I’d tell Pete how tipsy I’m getting and I would stop
paying attention and just fall into his eyes instead, and get moony with the servers
and shower blessed feelings of looseness and freedom all over the place … to
the couple coming in as we’re leaving, to the parking attendant, to the people
walking down the street that we are now slowly driving past on our way home .… Oh,
gosh, there is nothing like barely grazing reality with the tip of a finger. And
the shops and the patios are open.
But would it really be a moony-eyed losing myself into
twinkling lights and the bliss of a loose semi-consciousness? Um, no. Nor
should it be. We are in a time of vigilance. This was never going to be a great
21-day diet or a nice 30-day workout challenge. And now we are in an ever-extending
time of vigilance, because we are having a huge. Problem. With vigilance. Welcome
to my first official funk of the Covid-19 saga.
I wish I didn’t feel like our culture shows up like this to
most things. I mean we love a good cause, and we love a good righteous
indignation. We can show up for a good solid week of tirade and disdain. Sometimes
we even show up for an election to show just how engaged we are. And we are mired
in events that might be cultural tipping points, events that are highlighting
existing and also new chasms in how we care for one another and how the systems
we support limit our abilities to do so. They just keep coming: race, politics,
social safety nets, waste, greed, hegemony. Pandemic. But when there is one
thing—one present-focused thing—that does not require rewriting 400 years of
history, and we aren’t doing that? When we just can’t seem to keep our masks
on, or even deign to put one on at all? When there seems to be an almost
toddler-like tantrum about discomfort? Oh yeah, I am in a funk nice and good
now. I think some people imagine that this is a transformational moment in
time, where things just couldn’t possibly be the same again after such events.
And yet they can. They shouldn’t be, but they can. And they might. They really
might.
I’ll definitely visit Kate and buy something. Without
touching lots of things. And not staying so long. And I will sit on a patio
soon, to support my local businesses. But I won’t be holding onto a tether of
reality with a graze of a fingertip, I’ll be clenching the wrought-iron table with
both hands. I’ll probably gulp my martini to ease my anxiety. I’ll worry over
and hen-peck the poor service staff because I am concerned for their safety,
and Pete will roll his eyes at me because I over-coddle. Then I’ll likely go
home and crumple with the exhaustion of pushing my comfort zone. It might as
well have been the 5K challenge I have never considered doing nor ever will. My
soul-flow liberation into the social universe is just going to have to wait. And
I am on an adventure toward a revised relationship with the meander. Argh.
Hallie Beth Durchslag, PhD, lives
and works in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where she teaches, writes, and maintains a
private practice as a Jungian-based, psychodynamic psychotherapist. Her first
book, The Collective Unconscious in the Age
of Neuroscience: Severe Mental Illness and Jung in the 21st Century
(Routledge) is being released July 2020 (www.routledge.com/9781138057364).
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