small time sensuality

I was walking round the Albert Street oval earlier - it's such an invitation to lose yourself, this going out masked for just an hour of exercise thing, and I was lost down some dark river of absentminded running inner chatter - and then I noticed that I wasn't present, and came back. I came back without a bump and that's the interesting part.

Today was a little strange. It's Thursday. I began this week in a very elevated mood, while Melbourne's consensus mood was dark and grim. I was, and intend to stay, happy to be well and safe. I was profoundly relieved to learn that I hadn't caught covid from a brief but definite exposure to an infected person in the workplace last week, hadn't caught it and, horror of horrors, passed it on. Waiting for that negative test result was painful and difficult in a way that felt new, and by definition, the pain and difficulty made me learn something about myself. 

Today that almost elation at not being infected has faded, and yes, it's been a strange day. I guess to some degree that's about coming back into communication with prevailing atmosphere. I'm not unhappy or afraid or worried, but, at the risk of repeating myself, I do find the situation impenetrably surreal, or unreal perhaps. (There is a ridiculous, infantile, sexualised fascination with the Chief Health Officer afloat in social media, among women of my age and class, and I'm appalled by it - how would it be if he was a woman and it was men carrying on about how attractive he is - but there is undeniably something very compelling about him and about the other regular participants in the long daily briefings on Victoria's pandemic. I think it's that these people, the CHO especially, are equipped by training, profession, experience and psychological orientation to not view the pandemic as  novel and overwhelming bad dream but as a practical and real challenge to be met and fought with practical and real actions, and it's hypnotic to watch someone think about it that way.) Well, today, strange etc (I can see i'm probably not going to get this piece of writing where I thought at the outset it needed to go, which is fine, good even). I decided I'd spend the whole day listening to ABBA albums while I worked. I thought ABBA would bring me little spots of joy, like the morning sunlight falling on the floor does. And they did but also that abstracted sadness which comes from sitting with art about somebody's griefs and regrets and longings. 

I ate more than I needed, and drank so much coffee and tea that by lunchtime I couldn't sit still at my desk and I was chattering my teeth (is that the right word? Doesn't seem right). So I sat on the couch, looked out the window, and read the first four chapters of the last of the Agatha Christies I bought the day several weeks ago when David drove us up into the Dandenongs - they seem an awfully long way from here now - and despite the caffeine I felt an irresistible sleepiness, and I lay down and pulled the blanket over me and gave in to sleep. 

I sometimes feel a sudden wave of sleepiness in an analytic session. The interpretation presented to me (that locution means, I guess, that I don't really buy it) is that sleep might have been the refuge from the intolerable when I had few resources and many challenges. When I used to see my doctor in her room it seemed to me that it might also be because I often survived on five or six hours sleep and rushed about all day and being quiet and reflective on her couch was a break from all that - almost the opposite, in a way. Well, today the last sensation before sleep was of letting go and relaxing into the soft enveloping embrace of the gentle light and sound in the room, the warm texture of the yellow woollen blanket over my body and my bare feet and the blue velvet cushion under my cheek. I do sometimes feel very strange when I'm on my own 'in isolation' and sometimes I relax into that strangeness and it becomes a completely epicene experience, extravagant and luxurious. 

I woke up without managing to come all the way back to full consciousness. A little heavy in the head and a bit squinty around the eyes. The room was too warm. I couldn't tell you how I spent the afternoon hours - I did some tiny shreds and scraps of work, but the rest is a blank, which means I probably put in a substantial session of doomscrolling.  The very unchanging nature of the news in Melbourne means this activity is losing the lustre of terror which once made it so compelling and instead it's actually becoming a bore, which is really a great thing, although of course I want the news to change. I somehow came to at about 5:30 and remembered that I needed to go out for a walk, so I put on my coat and mask and out I went.

Next to staying away from people, the highest health and therefore survival imperative for me is to chart a course between giving myself things that I want and doing the things that I must. My aim is to stop mentally punishing myself for having put on weight and lost a lot of muscle, but not to gain any more weight and make an effort to not lose any more mobility in my joints, especially ankles, knees, shoulders, hips and wrists. Going out for a walk every day will protect me from becoming completely physically crippled and it does elevate my mood, somehow; it's a lonely and strange experience in ways old and new but when I arrive home I find it easy to flow on with what I want and need to do. This evening I hung wet washing to dry, made a dish of cauliflower gratin and a separate one of broccoli gratin (I have an excess of vegetables because I did an online shopping order on the weekend in anticipation of being ill and confined to the flat for at least two weeks), and while these were cooking I washed my face, put on my pyjamas and did a video yoga class, then I ate cheesy vegetables and vinegared lettuce and watched one more episode of The War of the Worlds. Between the SBS On Demand app, my TV, and my incompetence, something has gone wrong and I can only seem to view a Chinese-subtitled edition of this very upsetting program, it wouldn't matter about the subtitles except half the time the characters are speaking French. I can guess what's going on but I'm not making any progress learning either French or Chinese. After that I cleared the dishes and poured myself about a tablespoon of Frangelico into a glass of ice and lime, and I stood out on the balcony to drink it, thinking about the curfew and hearing the odd motor vehicle nearby but seeing no one. 

Over the weekend when I was waiting for the test result, it was the purest negative experience of living in the moment. The anxiousness of waiting for the appearance of symptoms and of waiting for a text or phonecall, and the effort required to short-circuit anxious anticipations of the future or equally useless anxious rehashes of the past: trapped in this parallelogram I was literally conscious of every breath; straining effortfully to find my yoga breath which brings strength and ease to the body and brings the mind into the now; eating ginger and kimchi for my palate but also for immunity; trying to notice / not notice small currents of disorder and discomfort in my sinus and chest and joints; going to the bathroom to dab jasmine oil on my throat because it's beautiful but also to have the comfort of knowing I still had my sense of smell. If I'd been alone I might've cried or stayed in bed, but Lenny was there. Parents often do for children what they can't do for themselves and I held myself together for him.

We're mortal. Breath, comfort, a little stolen sprig of daphne, sleeping cats, lamplight, a taste in my mouth of liquorice tea and mandarins; listening to the clock ticking on the wall and the soft click of the needle at the end of the groove; a slight tightness in the nasal passages and a light stiffness in the neck; the gentle warmth and weight of my own hands one on top of the other or resting on the creases where leg meets hip. The future is very uncertain.