My new pet  …………

………and other things I like a lot

about this unexpected moment in time.

Mindfulness is a highly overworked word these days. It has become a marketing word. But let me use it one more time, in Jon Kabat Zinn’s sense of sitting with Just What Is.

At least, here it is from a point of view,  suddenly unemployed,  an extrovert without companions.

The hustle is gone. A certain sense of ennui has set in, at least for me. What is there to want?  To go for?  There is a new pace.  New kinds of discipline.  Find one project per day and take time to finish it.  

Roll out of bed and go right straight to yoga class. Select any one of many world class teachers, Wear any old clothing that meets minimal Zoom requirements.

Which brings me to the pet.  I have longed for a dog for several years. But pets are forbidden in my apartment house.  However, I realized that a certain very very small black spider was traveling across the ceiling while I was down on the floor in the one-student yoga class in my sunny office. He became very important to me. A companion without a mask !  And I learned a lesson when I spied him emerging on a close by wall.  I tried to take his picture.  He was too fast. And now he is hiding somewhere, waiting for me to let him go.  With no scrutiny.

And that brings me to the list of just what is :

* The weather. Spring has caught the slowed pace. It has been cool. Daffodils have had  their day and another day and another. Those early magnolias were with us for a very long time this year, in spite of being just a little bit out of their zone.

* The light. The lack of smog in the air has allowed special clarity in the bright,  natural light bouncing against the white-walled barns.

* The fresh air.  The stars. More stars. The easy breathing. The spaciousness.

* Old friends from everywhere. It’s no longer my habit to ignore phone calls from unrecognized area codes.  More than likely, someone remembered me from a long time ago and is calling to check up, to send me a photo of our younger selves or a page from a hiking journal.

* The open highways. No need to jockey for lanes, to dart into a tiny opening. And with the less than $2. price of gas – this unfamiliar feature is eye candy if nothing else. Together, the temptation is there to just go the open road, set off on that cross-country trip always dreamed of. But then there is the relaxation of that ennui again. Can’t cross the state line so there is no need to pack the car, make the list, stop the paper. Why go?  Everyplace is just like here, now.

* Cleaned out closets. the pantry. the book shelves.

* Sobriety. I promised myself, from the first, that I would not hoard. And so the liquor closet is bare and tries to be the bright side of that story:  No single factor has been able to privatize the liquor stores until coronavirus shone its spotlight on our open, neighboring states.

Like any new love. This one appeared suddenly, with no warning, carries unexpected and unpredictable traits.

            As we are all, now, fond of saying:  This is the new norm. it just is.