It’s three days till the 5 yr anniversary of lockdown for my hometown. On March 16, 2020, the San Francisco Bay Space was one of many first to shut every little thing. I keep in mind the weirdness viscerally. One luxurious remained. Since I stay on the seaside, I used to be allowed to stroll to the seaside. All metropolis dwellers have been banned from the seaside areas, so the seashores have been empty, which felt profoundly unfair. But it surely was type of great to have the seaside empty aside from my native neighbors.
A part of the weirdness was that day-after-day, there was one thing new and useless on the seaside. It made me type of paranoid. Sooner or later, the seaside was affected by tiny blue jellyfish corpses. The subsequent day, a superbly preserved useless bobcat was on the seaside. The subsequent day, a whale carcass. The subsequent, black birds, all useless, littered the shore. The subsequent, three useless seals.
I’ve been strolling the seaside each day for 17 years. I’d by no means seen something prefer it earlier than or since, so it felt apocalyptic. It was very scary after we thought the air may kill us, earlier than we actually understood what we have been coping with.
My housemate April was disinfecting our mail. We have been wild harvesting meals, because it was spring and there are various edible wild vegetation the place I stay. Between what was frozen in our freezers and what we may harvest outside, we didn’t must go to the shops. That felt safer on the time.
Certainly one of my shut associates had been deserted by his fiance in the course of the evening. He awoke days into lock down to search out her disappeared. It took an excellent week earlier than he realized she had willfully deserted him, taking her stuff along with her at nighttime shadows of moonlight. We moved him into our home as a result of he was so depressed, we have been afraid he was going to die. He’s an elder. He was frail already. So after shifting him in, we needed to hold his vulnerability in thoughts each time we decided about what to convey into our Covid bubble. We sacrificed plenty of freedom so as to take him in. But it surely felt just like the least we may do.
A writing instructor pal informed me to write down down every little thing, that at some point, the writers amongst us would start to piece collectively what had occurred. Listed here are some snippets of what I wrote.
I feel the jetty of rocks in Bolinas is simply that- rocks. However part of me sees ships coming from determined locations to contaminate our shores. No one in Bolinas has Covid. One of many wealthy residents paid for everybody to get examined, regardless that Covid assessments are scarce and I can’t discover a single one to maintain at house. I ponder if the entitled folks from huge cities will attempt to sneak their method to Bolinas to attempt to keep protected. I ponder in the event that they’ll get the previous hippies who cover on the market sick.
Due to lockdown, the ten years of development noise that has been taking place subsequent door has lastly ceased. The air that might kill us remains to be and silent, a mixture of hazard and utter peace. I really feel responsible that elements of me are having fun with this, figuring out that it’s my excessive privilege to stay proper subsequent to a nationwide park, when so many are trapped in tenement housing, respiration the identical air.
My neighbors all collect, social distancing, to observe the sundown. It’s develop into a nightly celebration, a pagan ritual that touches upon the vulnerability all of us really feel. We’re celebrating surviving one other day. It brings me almost to tears each evening, seeing my candy neighbors. They carry do-it-yourself kombucha and baggage of greens harvested from their gardens. We’re afraid to the touch issues from one another’s gardens or homes, however we danger doing so anyway. It’s like a free farmer’s market, everybody sharing our bounty. Part of me needs this wouldn’t finish. It’s so good to have all of the vacationers gone, leaving solely my associates. However nonetheless, I really feel survivor’s guilt as I watch the information and see that the folks dying probably the most are those with the fewest privileges. I didn’t earn my survival. They didn’t earn their dying. It feels profoundly unfair.
In the present day, I hiked an empty path to a tree the place a picket swing hangs. Somebody had carved into it “We’re all gonna die.” I felt scared to the touch the swing. Another person who might be sick had clearly touched it earlier than me. However I wished to swing on that swing, to really feel my legs kicking and see the ocean on the horizon, greater than I wished to keep away from touching a doubtlessly contaminated floor. So I swang.
My daughter seems like a ghost, sitting in entrance of that Zoom display screen with the whites flickering on her face after 12 years of Waldorf no-screens. No media. No TV. No films. No telephones. No computer systems for 12 years. And now, all the sudden, it’s all screens, on a regular basis. She is checked out. I can inform. Our pet is the one factor holding her in her physique, as she wraps herself round that canine like a safety blanket.
We have gotten a blue zone. If this pandemic lasted indefinitely, we might develop into much more so, I believe. Our group has arrange an nameless fund to assist anybody who isn’t doing okay. The younger persons are going to the shops for the previous folks. Folks have develop into hostile to outsiders, since so many individuals listed here are fairly aged and fragile. We’re defending them, however it feels flawed to show away those that don’t stay right here, when it’s such a protected haven. In the present day, I used to be swimming on the seaside with Moose. It was dawn and the water was freezing, however I wanted to do not forget that I’m alive, so the bracing water was invigorating. We swam means out of the cove, and as I regarded again to shore, I noticed a lovely bare Black man, sculpted like a Michelangelo. He put his fingers up within the air like he was Rocky and howled. He didn’t see me or Moose, so I’m positive he thought he was alone. After I swam again to shore and he noticed me, he froze, eyes white, terror washing over his joyful face. He began fawning apologies, explaining that he was the fireplace chief from one other city, that he knew he wasn’t speculated to be on the seaside. He have to be so fearful of white girls, frightened that I’d flip him in, frightened that I would scream “Rape” and land him in jail, frightened that our society would imagine my story over his. I informed him it was okay, that he may park his automobile in my driveway if he ever wanted to stroll all the way down to the seaside with out getting detected. I thanked him for his service. My neighbors wouldn’t be comfortable I did this, however it felt like one small factor I may do to rectify the injustice. His face relaxed after I informed him that, as a health care provider, I didn’t agree with slicing folks off from the seashores. If there’s one place we ought to be comparatively protected, if there’s one place good for our psychological well being, if there’s one place with a lot breeze it may blow Covid away, it’s on the seaside.
The photographs of Occasions Sq.- completely empty- give me the chills. It’s laborious to think about what our world might be like 5 years from now. Will our children be okay? Will all of us go bankrupt? Will this result in battle or be a gateway to peace? Will we get up to what we’re doing to the environment and eventually do one thing about local weather disaster? Will we ostrich ourselves much more? I don’t know…
The Empty Shore
No footprints however our personal,
no voices however the wind’s—
West Marin stands untouched,
a secret saved by the tides.
The waves hum with out witness,
the redwoods whisper their names,
the mountain lions transfer with out worry
on trails now solely theirs.
No vacationers wander these wild locations,
no city-weary ft kiss the sand.
We have now the bounty to ourselves,
and oh, how heavy abundance can really feel.
Guilt rises just like the fog at daybreak—
whereas others lengthy for open air,
we breath deep,
unburdened by crowds, unshaken by haste.
But within the hush, gratitude swells,
as if the land has taken a breath, too.
For as soon as, the world slowed sufficient
to listen to the osprey name.
And now, when the roads are full once more,
when the tide of hurry has returned,
typically, within the quiet areas of my coronary heart,
I nonetheless stroll that vacant shore.
These are a few of my reminiscences. What are yours?
When you haven’t written concerning the pandemic, possibly now could be the time. You’re welcome to search out some inspiration to your writing in my on-line course that I taught with my writing instructor Nancy Aronie.
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