The End of Life As We Knew It

May 10, 2020

As I said last time I wrote — I’m learning to meditate. This is a great time to be doing this, since what I’m learning is to put my attention on something (my breath, while I’m meditating, but it could be anything throughout the day, which I’ve now learned is called “being mindful”) and keep my attention on that thing, without being distracted. It’s not easy. I’m learning the hard way.

Today was an especially good day for learning not to be distracted. It’s a sparkling spring day today, the air is filled with birdsong and the rustling of our neighbor’s Confederate flag.

I decided to meditate on our back deck, to get some sun on my face, so I sat myself down, blue-toothed my phone to Headspace, closed my eyes, and…

Our back yard runs along the sidewalk of a narrow street, so we sit on our deck and watch the people walking dogs, and jogging by without masks.

When we moved here in the 80s this was a quiet little suburban street, across from a forest. It’s now apartments, townhouses, and parking lots. Our street is one mile long, and our house sits exactly in the middle. We know this because we used to run along this street, in that other lifetime before the pandemic, now a dim memory. If you were running today, you’d turn right, run the half mile to one end, and you’d come to a firehouse. If you turned left, you’d run half a block and pass the new nursing home they built last summer (on what we considered “our hill” — our children sledded down it every winter, in the summer we’d run up our hill every day, to the top, to stand in the wind like kings gazing out upon our kingdom — until an enterprising developer levelled our hill and built a nursing home and filled it to maximum occupancy before it was even finished;) and if you kept running past that nursing home you’d come to a second larger, multi-building nursing home down at that end of our mile-long street.

Both ends used to be forest. But that was then, and now we live halfway between two nursing homes and a fire station.

Today I meditated for 30 minutes, using my new skills to not be distracted all eight times a convoy of ambulances and fire engines went screaming down to the nursing homes. This might be funny, depending on your mood.

The air is so sweet-smelling this time of year! All the new buds and baby flowers and moist soil. It was so mild and sweet today that our next-door neighbor came out on her deck, too, to sit beneath her Confederate flag, and fill the fine spring air with cigarette smoke. This might be funny, too.

So, as I say, I’m learning to not be distracted. I’m learning to be aware of what my mind is doing, what it’s paying attention to. Just to be aware, that’s all. That’s the trick. Not to analyze, or think about what my mind is doing, or feel happy or sad about it. Just to notice what my mind is doing. If I catch myself getting caught up in a thought (like “More fire engines? How many died up there today?” or a feeling “Pyoo that stinks dammit!”) and I forget to pay attention to my breath — then my job is to simply bring myself back to paying attention to my breath. That’s all there is to it, nothing more than that. No judging of myself, no internal commentary, no thinking about meditation, no clever insights, none of that. Just ignoring whatever distracted me, and going back to my breath. This is what I’m learning to do. The more I practice this, the more I realize how hard it is.

I love the Headspace app. That’s how I started. I love Andy Puddicombe — he’s the sweet, down-to-earth, gentle guy whose idea it was. There’s another app called “Calm” that people like, but I’m not much of a fan (although I like some of their bedtime stories) because I don’t care for the motives and culture of the company, which I can feel in the vibe of the app.

I don’t like this whole “Essential Workers” thing. It makes me angry. 

So — what — every night at 7pm we’re supposed to stand outside banging pots and pans to say thank you to our “Essential Workers?” And they’re supposed to be grateful for all of that support?

Here’s an idea. Since we’re so appreciative of them, how about letting our “Essential Workers” go home? Where they won’t get sick? Where they can be with their families? Where they can hide from the virus like we’re doing? How about we go out, instead? To drive the subways and buses on the night shift, or stock the grocery stores, or the local drug store, or the bank, or gas station, or hang off the back of a garbage truck in the rain, or clean other people’s houses, or drive the bus, or work in a meat-packing plant?

How about paying “our Essential Workers” more than minimum wage?

How about, instead of using a fake, hijacked euphemism, we call them what they really are? Our servants and laborers? The poorer people, the ones we make do our dirty work, because we’re privileged enough to avoid doing it ourselves?

How about we stop pretending the economy “shut down?” That is an offense and an insult to everyone working days and nights to keep the economy running. The economy did not shut down. People are still working. Mostly people of color, not white people. How about saying that out loud? How about telling the truth about why more people of color are infected — and dying — than whites?

My emotions are all over the place lately. First I’m furious, then I’m giddy with laughter, then I’m overcome with profound sadness, then I’m furious again. Always the extreme versions of emotions.

The surreal absurdity of, well, everything — every single aspect of every single thing — the absurdity is funny, so funny, so unspeakably hilariously funny, so fall-down funny piled on top of even more funny, a mountain, a whole range of mountains, of funny, it’s just… I can’t even wrap my brain around it… and the absurdity keeps coming! This crazy implausible moment just keeps going! On and on! Getting worse and worse! Like a dream, but it’s not a dream, I don’t think it’s a dream, I think it’s real, I mean I thought it was, but is it? Everyone else seems to think it’s real, but they’re all in the dream, so it’s confusing. This might be me having lost my mind and this is what losing your mind feels like…

Most of all I’m sad. When I meditate, when my mind gets quiet enough for me to see what’s in there, what I find is that I am unspeakably, wretchedly, profoundly, sad.

I don’t know what to do with the depth of this sadness. I don’t want to look away. People are dying. Children are dying. Healthcare workers are giving their own lives, and the lives of their own family members — they are rushing into the fire — to save other strangers — without equipment! — without masks to protect themselves! — the last human to hold the hand of a dying stranger so he or she doesn’t have to suffocate, on a hard guerney, in a cold corridor, in panicked choking, alone.

I can’t look away, I shouldn’t, I won’t, not when people are sacrificing so much to help others.

I won’t allow myself to pretend that this is not happening. People have no money for food! Children are hungry, scared, orphaned. 75,000 people have died! They’re saying as many as 250,000 dead by the end of the year!

It would be immoral to look away.

And then… our dance community. What a beautiful life we had! Our dance community is… gone… forever.

That life — the one we knew — disappeared into the air. Just like that! Like a whisper. Like a soft gust of wind, silently, in an instant, before you noticed, evaporating into dreams, memories, stories, old videos, photographs ….

Vanishing, just like that! Life is transient, fleeting.

I can barely conceive of this: That we will never again have those happy, carefree weekends, gathering together in cities around the world, friends from all the countries, in all the languages, all our many styles and cultures, all of us coming together to laugh and hug and celebrate. And dance.

That life is gone. In the blink of an eye, it’s gone.

The hotels are gone. What hotel chains that are able to survive will be different — everything about them, every single thing, will be different.

The airlines are gone. Frequent, easy, inexpensive travel around the world, is gone. Pro teachers travelling from country to country every weekend is gone.

The fear of physical contact between dancers, widespread global unemployment, the lack of leisure money, worldwide economic instability, what will soon be customary worldwide masks, and sterilization, and hand-washing …

That world we knew changed in a flash, just like that. Life is impermanent, and the only constant is change.

I’m a realist. I crave a view of the whole picture without rosy glasses — it’s my way of finding some comfort with life’s impermanence, my attempt to at least know what’s real.

But I’m an optimist, too. I always see hope — I can’t not see it. By default, my mind always creates a promising resolution of the story. Not always a happy ending, because we die, and how can death ever be called a happy ending? But always a hopeful ending.

So now, too, I can see that things will come out alright. I can see that we are living through a moment that will be recognized as a turning point, a hinge, in human history; where we find ourselves facing the consequences of many unforced errors; where we are on a steep learning curve and must fight many battles at once as we climb upward towards greater humanity; and I see the forces of good asserting themselves, as always, and that they will prevail, like they always do.

We will never again have dancing as we knew it. But we dancers are unstoppable. We’ll find a way.