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18/52 - Finding calm and feeling connected
May. 3rd, 2020 02:50 pmI've just got back from my walk. I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to go today, or for how long. I just knew I had to push myself to get out again after a week where the edges of my world got smaller and smaller as I spent less time outside, and work pressure got greater and greater.
Yesterday a friend shared this video which initially made me angry and sad and scared by/at the metaphor of us all blasting off from Earth in little pods, but then I realised my reaction was at recognising a distillation/mirroring of my feelings about lockdown and I settled into the advice. The two messages I found useful were; that continuing to work - regardless of what your work is - is valuable because it keeps the cogs of normal life turning (I have been struggling with work, feeling angry we are asked to do anything so mundane and inconsequential as teach social theory and ask students to submit assessments when the world is falling down around our ears). And that a minimum of exercise every day is essential. I went to sleep reflecting on my resolution to get out of the house on Sunday - something I'd already failed to do on Saturday.
I pulled up Google maps this morning and checked for green spaces I haven't walked to yet. I headed for Daisy Dip with a plan to loop it and then make my way over to the Common. I was glad of the message from the video because the cool air and dull sky was not enticing me out - but I pushed myself on.
Daisy dip is amazing, this enormous green space in the middle of a sprawl of inter-war social housing. It was cool and quiet there, the damp of the trees quieting everything, but carrying birdsong clearly. I carried on to the Common and walked in via the top entrance on the far side from me which I never usually walk through - it was really quiet along those paths, I am obviously not the only one who tends to the largest open spaces.
Eventually I passed the locked gates I've hesitated at before and resolved to try and find a way in - which I had heard existed
It turns out it's not much further on to get to the entrance and the cemetery as a whole is enormous. I felt just the most wonderful creeping excitement to discover this sanctuary of nature, hidden in plain sight. Hard to pick a route through, endless turns beckoning me on to different corners, picking my way through fallen grave stones, bulging roots, squirrels dashing across my path, robins jumping from branch to branch, stone to stone.
Stones overtaken by trees, entwining roots and branches, pulling stones apart and striving for the light. Nature battling the small intrusions by people - occasional paths crushed down in the grass, trees making archways over paths with hanging leaves brushing your hair as you duck under.
Quietness which is loud for the bird song. But the sounds of life from the Common thoroughly deadened and moments of exquisite solitude amongst colour and calm. The dedications on stones, eroding in the 100 years or more since they were erected giving a kind of steady reminder of the ordinariness of life and death. The echoes of life and loss seeming important right now - remembering how we connect, and can connect across time and space just with the smallest of prompts and reminders of shared experience and emotion.
I've been wanting to rebalance my life for some time now - years, even. This lockdown is painful, and it's frustrating, and it's got this dreadful undertow of knowing how many lives are being lost. But it's also given me space to find out how I might rebalance. I've had the chance to deepen connections and relationships with people - people who have been in my life for two decades or more, and people who I've only met this year.
I don't expect for a moment the rest of this year will be easy, and I am more than aware that I've been on strike so much in the last few years because the culture of HE is crushing to the point individual choices about 'not working' are largely removed, but there is always space to resist. The type of industrial tactics I've been leaning on in the last few weeks - strict division of my time, clear communication to students about how available I can be, inserting stuff into my lectures to make them clearly dated to *right now* so they will have little value if the university tries to sieze them and reuse them without my consent...these will still be available to me.
Yesterday a friend shared this video which initially made me angry and sad and scared by/at the metaphor of us all blasting off from Earth in little pods, but then I realised my reaction was at recognising a distillation/mirroring of my feelings about lockdown and I settled into the advice. The two messages I found useful were; that continuing to work - regardless of what your work is - is valuable because it keeps the cogs of normal life turning (I have been struggling with work, feeling angry we are asked to do anything so mundane and inconsequential as teach social theory and ask students to submit assessments when the world is falling down around our ears). And that a minimum of exercise every day is essential. I went to sleep reflecting on my resolution to get out of the house on Sunday - something I'd already failed to do on Saturday.
I pulled up Google maps this morning and checked for green spaces I haven't walked to yet. I headed for Daisy Dip with a plan to loop it and then make my way over to the Common. I was glad of the message from the video because the cool air and dull sky was not enticing me out - but I pushed myself on.
Daisy dip is amazing, this enormous green space in the middle of a sprawl of inter-war social housing. It was cool and quiet there, the damp of the trees quieting everything, but carrying birdsong clearly. I carried on to the Common and walked in via the top entrance on the far side from me which I never usually walk through - it was really quiet along those paths, I am obviously not the only one who tends to the largest open spaces.
Eventually I passed the locked gates I've hesitated at before and resolved to try and find a way in - which I had heard existed
It turns out it's not much further on to get to the entrance and the cemetery as a whole is enormous. I felt just the most wonderful creeping excitement to discover this sanctuary of nature, hidden in plain sight. Hard to pick a route through, endless turns beckoning me on to different corners, picking my way through fallen grave stones, bulging roots, squirrels dashing across my path, robins jumping from branch to branch, stone to stone.
Stones overtaken by trees, entwining roots and branches, pulling stones apart and striving for the light. Nature battling the small intrusions by people - occasional paths crushed down in the grass, trees making archways over paths with hanging leaves brushing your hair as you duck under.
Quietness which is loud for the bird song. But the sounds of life from the Common thoroughly deadened and moments of exquisite solitude amongst colour and calm. The dedications on stones, eroding in the 100 years or more since they were erected giving a kind of steady reminder of the ordinariness of life and death. The echoes of life and loss seeming important right now - remembering how we connect, and can connect across time and space just with the smallest of prompts and reminders of shared experience and emotion.
I've been wanting to rebalance my life for some time now - years, even. This lockdown is painful, and it's frustrating, and it's got this dreadful undertow of knowing how many lives are being lost. But it's also given me space to find out how I might rebalance. I've had the chance to deepen connections and relationships with people - people who have been in my life for two decades or more, and people who I've only met this year.
I don't expect for a moment the rest of this year will be easy, and I am more than aware that I've been on strike so much in the last few years because the culture of HE is crushing to the point individual choices about 'not working' are largely removed, but there is always space to resist. The type of industrial tactics I've been leaning on in the last few weeks - strict division of my time, clear communication to students about how available I can be, inserting stuff into my lectures to make them clearly dated to *right now* so they will have little value if the university tries to sieze them and reuse them without my consent...these will still be available to me.