Shower Thoughts: If you were invisible, you’d be effectively blind since light would pass through your retina rather than striking it.
This morning I am writing from my bed-desk. I’m thinking about the parts of me that need a shower and weighing that against the effort to leave my warm bed. The bedroom window is open a bit and the sounds of crows, seagulls, and chickadees, other spring birds, and that goddamn weed wacker play on random all morning. How many weeds you gotta wack buddy?! Landscapers in Bellingham are considered essential. Go figure.
The crabapple tree outside the window has wilted. Old blooms still cling to the tree, waiting for the new fruit, developing below the surface, to push them off to the ground.
I heard on the radio this morning that nationally Americans spent less money on food in April than they did in March. My grocery bills went up this last month because I’m shopping at smaller grocery stores; they have fewer products to help cover the cost for their property taxes, etc. Are they grocery boutiques? My cousin told me about a grocery store in the Chicago suburbs, where he use to live, that experimented with a carpeted grocery store. It grossed everyone out, and you couldn’t navigate your shopping cart very well. It was a fail.
Friday is my day off. Unless a “fire” happens with any of the properties or publications the day is mine. Yep, all mine.
Traffic around town is almost at normal levels. Many people, including myself, still drive distracted. Forgetting to signal, not looking both ways, driving way to slow on the freeways. It’s very strange or maybe it is normal now.
Decided last night to walk by the bay instead of my standard walk around the lake in the old-growth forest. The park by the bay was packed! I turned around and headed for another trail I know close by. I’m just not ready to jump into a crowd yet, and that’s OK. I’m not like my polar opposites that meet in groups for BBQ’s, house parties, and Capitol protests. In other states, these folks carry guns in public to help illustrate their rights to assemble, get a haircut, and eat at the Applebees. True Americans. I wonder if they assemble because there are no “old” people in their lives? Are there no friends around them that are “high risk” for the virus? Diabetics? Obese? Over 60-year-olds? People recovering from cancer or other illness? That must be it. How nice of them to speak for us that do.
I look forward to this all being over. I fear I will discover that my post-lockdown life is as similar to full pandemic mode. Honestly, I FEEL the pandemic because it is everywhere. It is a global event. This planet of peoples moan and wiggle like a two-year-old sitting through a piano recital.
IF the world were normal right now, which it will never be again, then I could enjoy this morning. This morning where I slept in, until 8:37 a.m., ate breakfast & drank coffee in bed, started writing, and I’m still here at 11:36 am. Glorious. If this was, let’s say, Friday, September 20, 2019, I would not label this morning a case of “pandemic depression”, no…it would be relaxation. A person could even go so far as to say it is what the pre-pandemic modern world use to refer to as a “personal day.” (remember personal days?) I could find joy in working at home if all my neighbors got into their cars and drove to work this morning! THEN today would be a special day for me. But, it is not. It is day 53 of the lockdown, and there is nothing but the heavy responsibility of staying home and saving lives. Whatever…
**
Here is a draft I’m fussing with today:
Eyes Open
by Shannon Laws
I awake with a dry throat
from moaning in my sleep
I’m nailed to my bed
by the sounds of one a.m.
a rustle of false blueberry bush
heavy bodies trot by with a snort
I think I hear an owl a few blocks over
open mouths of raccoons act out a scene
play fight under the staged crab-apple tree
It’s so busy outside
at night
when all I do is sleep
##
My current mood expressed in a meme. Take care. Be a hero and stay home.
-Shannon
shannon p. laws 