What’s today? It’s been six weeks since I shut my studio doors due to the pandemic. At least I think it’s been six weeks. Without an appointment book full of clients and classes, the days have blended into a temporal soup of drifting. I search my mind for familiar touchstones to guide me. Hmmm. Nothing comes up. What did I wear yesterday? Right. Sweat and a t-shirt. Is it Sunday? No. Wait. What was yesterday? My mind desperately sorts. Was yesterday the day I binge polished the chrome fixtures in the bathroom? No, that was two days ago . . . I think. Yesterday I rearranged all the cords from my computer, printer, modem, phone, lights that were a tangle under my desk for the last ten years. Now, where was I? Right. What day is it? I have entered the zone an unemployed friend once dubbed the no-day week. No more anticipation of a Sunday hike. I can hike every day, and Sunday feels
like . . . wait? Is today Sunday?
You’re reading this in June, but I wrote it in May to meet the publication deadline. For all I know, there will be no magazine in June. Or by some miracle, I’ll be back to work. Or the entire world will have entered some Matrix like virtual reality and all of us will be sitting in our rooms lost in simulated environments and eating Soylent. There may be Mad Max type bandits roaring up and down NC 20 trying to break into people’s homes to get their toilet paper. Or we may find ourselves standing at the ends of our driveways, at least 6 feet apart, singing “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony” together as we raise our faces to the startlingly blue sky and breathe in gratitude for having been passed over by the angel of death.
Or . . . while I can’t predict the future, I can marvel on a revelation that occurred since our confinement began. For at least 20 years, I have used the fact that I work every day as a reason to say I don’t have time. I don’t have time to write the novel I think about. I don’t have time to study Chinese. I don’t have time to sew that button on my pants (thank god for tunic tops). And of course, my favorite answer to my long suffering husband, “I don’t have time to talk to you about that now!”
So now I’m not going to the studio. I wake up in the morning, and the next thing I know, it’s lunchtime. Besides re-arranging the linen closet, what did I do? (Gosh, everything looks so nice, now.) Lunch, which used to be a ten minute shoveling of leftovers at my desk, has become a subject of conversation and debate. Should I make some tempeh reubens? Maybe today is the day I’ll go out and harvest the dandelions to make that dandelion fritter recipe my sister sent to me. While picking dandelions, I am knocked speechless by the exquisite palette carpeting my unmowed lawn of the yellow dandelions, pinkish blooming horsemint and delicate purple violets. Hey, wait, violets are edible too. Maybe I should really start the foraging process now in preparation for Armageddon. Or at least before Ron mows them all down. I grab a bunch of violets and start to snack. Wait. Why did I come out here? Right! Dandelions! What day is
it anyway?
By the time I’ve cleaned the kitchen from lunch (who knew one could spend an hour clearing after lunch) it’s time to think about dinner. One of the cats comes in begging for love. I usually never have time to indulge them, but now . . . we pet. We bond. And suddenly, it’s dinner time. And I still haven’t learned Chinese. But I have created another cool recipe for leftover beans.
Perhaps the gift of this pandemic is that I will learn more what I really want to do, instead of what I think I “should” be doing. Maybe my husband, who has been saying he doesn’t have to go back to oil painting will finally admit that it’s not that he doesn’t have time to go back to painting, he just doesn’t want to. I may finally admit that it’s not that I don’t have the time to create live Facebook videos to promote my practice. I just don’t want to. And in that moment of being liberated from the shoulds, I can take a big breath, grab some plastic bags and go out by the river and harvest the abundantly growing nettles, as I dream about a better world, and I won’t worry about how long it takes to pick, sort and hang them. Because I have all the time in the world.
What day is it anyway?
Body language expert, Lavinia Plonka has taught The Feldenkrais Method for over 25 years.
For more information, visit her at laviniaplonka.com