This Fish Bowl

I haven’t written in a while.

It’s bee hard to articulate and respond to the world through poetry or prose as Melbourne went into stage 4 lock-down last Monday. I have found myself lost trying to figure out what’s happening in the mood or energy of this city and the mood and energy within myself. I have also been wrestling with impostor syndrome as I started work as a Chaplain back in May at an aged care facility. And this feeling hasn’t gone away. I wonder what my education and my 30 years of existence can offer people who have lived through the Spanish Flu, the First World War, polio and the Second World War. If anything I come to work learning much more and receiving much more help from them then the other way around.

I come home from work on a train, watching the sun fall into night, and enter that sweet subliminal space of dusk. I say nothing, I do nothing, but sit on the train for 35 minutes watching the sun go down, participating at least in this moment of magic. And, on my better days, I wake up before work, meditate, breath deeply and move my body through a gentle hatha flow on my balcony with a beanie, 2 sweaters and sweatpants keeping me from the chill of the morning air in order to watch as night turns into day, the magic of dawn. This is what has kept me sane this past week and all through stage 3. I haven’t been able to get on board with the virtual church experience and so I’m creating my own solitude practices of witnessing the world begin and end.

This weekend, I barely left the house. There’s really not much we’re allowed to do outside of it. But I did run to a running track, at dusk, to feel my feet bouncing on the track, making my steps feel like I was running on air after pounding on cement to get there. And after I sprinted, I laid down on the middle of the field, with my back on the grass, knees curled into my chest as I watched the sun set. Every time, without fail, it feels like I’m witnessing something new and something special in dawn and dusk. But this time I was able to gaze up at the sky and be reminded of the earth, hugging and holding me as I hugged my knees into my chest. I was reminded of a similar view when I went swimming in the Sound just off of Vancouver at night time, staring up at the sky, seeing how the sky curved like a fish bowl, making me feel, too, like a fish lost in sea and yet somehow found. And so I breathed in its air and the scent of the grass and dirt as I bore witness to this phenomenal event that happens daily.

This pandemic has been a tragedy for so many people, particular the vulnerable and my beautiful friends who I try to serve. But I wonder if we can savour a meditation that serves us, as we live (literally) day by day, watching as cases rise or fall, as deaths increase or decrease, and give the magic of the day a similar attention. Remembering to breathe in the scent of a little dirt in this insignificant yet profound fish bowl we find ourselves in, keeping awake and watching the ritual of the sun, morning to evening, dawn to dusk.