It felt really weird at first but then I just relaxed and it was nice to get in a workout that wasn't walking.
One day I found myself thinking, I'm tired of walking but I quickly turned that thought around to I'm grateful that I have the ability to walk.
Left Zoom Zumba to attend an Instagram Live yoga class with Seane Corn. Sunday was so nice that it felt like a crime not to emerge from the basement to get outside and soak up the sun...
When I went to the grocery story about three weeks ago, this woman wished me "good luck" because everything had been picked over. It instantly made me think about preppers and a reality TV show that I'd watched on Netflix. Only watched one episode because I found it bothersome...
Thought about the workshop, Yoga As A Peace Practice, when one of the presenters said that you need to know how to grow your own food. This pandemic has been a lesson in many things, including not endlessly keeping food in the freezer.
Anyway, life is weird and scary right now, but I definitely know that many of us are in the same boat so I try not to panic. I continue with my pre-bed ritual of listening to 10 Percent Happier Live with meditation teachers. I get into a restorative posture and listen and breathe and it helps lighten the load that feels like it's weighing down my chest and heart.
One of my coworkers has been sending little notes of encouragement and, sometimes, poems.
I love this one that she shared:
Alive Together
Speaking
of marvels, I am alive
together with you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun,
when I might have been Abelard’s woman
or the whore of a Renaissance pope
or a peasant wife with not enough food
and not enough love, with my children
dead of the plague. I might have slept
in an alcove next to the man
with the golden nose, who poked it
into the business of stars,
or sewn a starry flag
for a general with wooden teeth.
I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas
or a woman without a name
weeping in Master’s bed
for my husband, exchanged for a mule,
my daughter, lost in a drunken bet.
I might have been stretched on a totem pole
to appease a vindictive god
or left, a useless girl-child,
to die on a cliff. I like to think
I might have been Mary Shelley
in love with a wrongheaded angel,
or Mary’s friend, I might have been you.
This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,
our chances of being alive together
statistically nonexistent;
still we have made it, alive in a time
when rationalists in square hats
and hatless Jehovah’s Witnesses
agree it is almost over,
alive with our lively children
who–but for endless ifs–
might have missed out on being alive
together with marvels and follies
and longings and lies and wishes
and error and humor and mercy
and journeys and voices and faces
and colors and summers and mornings
and knowledge and tears and chance.
together with you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun,
when I might have been Abelard’s woman
or the whore of a Renaissance pope
or a peasant wife with not enough food
and not enough love, with my children
dead of the plague. I might have slept
in an alcove next to the man
with the golden nose, who poked it
into the business of stars,
or sewn a starry flag
for a general with wooden teeth.
I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas
or a woman without a name
weeping in Master’s bed
for my husband, exchanged for a mule,
my daughter, lost in a drunken bet.
I might have been stretched on a totem pole
to appease a vindictive god
or left, a useless girl-child,
to die on a cliff. I like to think
I might have been Mary Shelley
in love with a wrongheaded angel,
or Mary’s friend, I might have been you.
This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,
our chances of being alive together
statistically nonexistent;
still we have made it, alive in a time
when rationalists in square hats
and hatless Jehovah’s Witnesses
agree it is almost over,
alive with our lively children
who–but for endless ifs–
might have missed out on being alive
together with marvels and follies
and longings and lies and wishes
and error and humor and mercy
and journeys and voices and faces
and colors and summers and mornings
and knowledge and tears and chance.
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