Trust the Magic of Beginnings
At the risk of being misunderstood, I want to go on record that I am experiencing a certain tranquility during this time and have an increasing wariness about its disappearance in the great reopening, however that looks in the weeks ahead. “Go placidly amid the noise and haste” from Desiderata has recently come to mind. How to do that, I wonder, with the noise and haste now gone and being more able to see it for what it is.
It occurs to me almost like an atmospheric pressure that has momentarily lessened. “What is the weight of the atmosphere?” I wondered, having forgotten whatever I once knew about it.
A tap on Google reveals 14.7 pounds per square inch at sea level, like being ten meters down in the water. We don’t feel it because it pushes in all directions. We are in the troposphere and barometric pressure is the measure. Lower pressure allows tissues to expand, while high pressure constricts tissues and can cause joint pain and turn people into weather forecasters because their knee or shoulder hurts ahead of a storm.
In some ways we are living in a lower pressure world, though I know a great many are not experiencing anything like tranquility in this shambolic mess. Were she and I to fall ill, this would be harder to write. But, as Montaigne opined, “All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.” This is an inquiry because I’m not sure what part of this is mine nor what it is I’ve carried with me to make parts of my life not tranquil. With these restrictions I’ve at least had no choice.
It looks to me like there are micro climates in a pandemic, perhaps akin to the ones in San Francisco, where we lived for while. The hills in the city and the Pacific nearby create little weather patterns all over the city. It can be sunny in Noe Valley, east of the Twin Peaks, while it is cool and foggy out in the Sunset District bordering the ocean.
We have been inconvenienced, certainly, and not a little fearful at times, being in the most vulnerable age cohort. I miss the library, but we have plenty of books. I need a haircut, but I can wear a hat. I miss swimming, but I’ve been running more. Long lines are a trial sometimes, but we have no young children in the house either. I’m not in the class of worker being called “elite and remote,” but we’ve both been able to keep working. Everyone has their own list of losses.
Edward Abbey wrote in a 1980 essay that “Year by year the institutions that dominate our lives grow ever bigger, more complicated, massive, impersonal, and powerful. Whether governmental, corporate, military, or technological–and how can any one of these be disentangled from the others? They weigh on society as the pyramids of Egypt weighed on the backs of those were conscripted to build them.” How much truer that is forty years later.
There is real weight on us out there, real pressure, whether we notice it or not, and it will be coming back. I, for one, do not feel ready. Meister Eckhart’s advice is apt–“And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.”
