Wow. What crazy times we are all experiencing. As someone in the art and fitness industry, as a mother, a daughter, wife, artist…and simply, a human. Now more than ever we are so very disjunct, and yet somehow connected. It’s more apparent as we watch “this,” well actually “our”, pandemic unfold. The world is scared. We are quarantining, denying, loving, questioning, spreading, arguing, helping,…revolving and hopefully eventually evolving through this. But my god, how? And until when? And what about those lovelies, that are not wearing masks stating insightful pearls of wisdom such as “It don’t matter, I don’t got it.”
Sometimes, at best, I feel more connected to each of you. I also feel the seemingly impossible need to try to help someone in some real way. Volunteering somewhere- but not actually leaving the house, because, you know- the plague and all. God, it all just feels so lacking in…gusto. I so badly want action. I so badly want to DO something. I feel like a fully suited fireman with a hose full of water just sitting down and watching a building burn. But that’s what I’m told to do, and what needs to be done, so the rest of the buildings won’t burn, I guess. So I stay seated. Maybe go get a healthy (yea right) snack, and then go sit back down on the couch and watch my fit body get flabbier and flabbier. (God, I hate online classes and jogging.)
My family has been quarantined for the last 2 months in a miniscule railroad apartment. Jason, my husband, is highly gifted in the art of agitation. (husbands, ugh.) Do they receive an underground secret man-degree majoring in Irritation? But I digress, we are still doing “all of the everything” pretty well. We are basically trying to just love each other as much as we can. It turns out that patience, time alone, exercise, and a vague routine does help for sure.
Then the pendulum swings, sometimes on the same breath, to the “Oh-hell-no mode.” I feel so over all of this. I want to be creative. I want to be a good teacher for my daughter. I want to be remotely interested in romance again. But, currently feel nothing. Just like the clouds outside with this drab white muting everywhere. Covering us in a fog. I’d love to give “content’ for a blog…but how useless? How to be motivated in this crap country is infuriating and disgusting. I am forced to have a bumbling idiot as our “leader” and the best I can do is sit at home and get fat. I want to fly again please. I want to spread joy through bungee classes- or dance in a real studio- with some real damn people too.
What a crazy place to be right now. How to motivate? How to… care? But not care too much that you sit in debilitating fear, and overwhelmed horror-stricken with paralysis and binge eating. This. This is the real. This constant oscillation between –“Oh hey, let’s go bake some bread and watch a movie” to the very real thought that I might not ever hug my Mom again.
I’m trying so desperately not to judge others with their spring-cleaning, outdoor projects…or working on their whatever the hell they’re working on. Here’s the truth; I’m grieving. Grieving for the ones that we have lost, the ones that are putting their lives on the line, the ones that we will inevitably loose. I’m scared for my own life. My mother’s life…everyone’s damn life. How can I go and do some sit-up’s and feel like it’s all ok? I mean talk about delusional. Or at best, it’s a killer form of denial. I envy the people that can do this, honestly. I just don’t have it in me. Maybe some of you can relate? I can try to give some (unsolicited) advise. Let yourself feel it. That’s all I got. Feel it. Sit with it. Learn from it, because when you do fly again- and teach once again, you and therefore your students will fly higher than before.
How is this associated at all with bungee? With aerial performance? With art or fitness? Well, we are humans. Art opens us to experience life more fully. Fitness classes create experiences that are communal and fun. Healthy lifestyles and choices enhance our quality of life. Art opens are thoughts, gives us new perspectives, creates new synapses in our brains. It’s just another example of how we are all integrated. COVID-19 is also showing us how we are all connected. Let this be the catalyst for our care of one another. Let this be a breakthrough for not only our nation, but our world. The virus is spreading. Let us spread along with it- joy, connection, assistance, bravery, and artistic levity for one another.
I’m trying desperately to take these times of introspection and catapult to a clearer more thoughtful place of focus. And sometimes it works, and I feel less shitty. I guess we can take this time, because we have not another option, right? We can sit with ugliness or grace or some weird combination of both, and …just wait. Like the waiting room in that Dr. Seuss book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” We sit and wait “for the mail to come, or the rain to go….or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants, or a wig with curls, or another chance….everyone is just waiting.” But, yes- we will escape, when we don’t have to wait anymore, and then we are hopefully filled up with more knowledge, or love, or awareness…and then able to fill others up. Until I’m filled…I’ll wait. We’ll wait. Remember how you are right now. Try to bask and acknowledge it. Put your arm around it and make friends. Love the times you have with yourself, or family…as my mother always says, this too shall pass. And when it does pass- be filled.