Best wishes, Robert
The virus is doing its thing. This particular gov't we live 'under' is carrying on as usual. We are at risk. Can we really be the revolution here?
It's March and lockdown is beginning. It will affect us all differently. In some ways I am grateful for my age, that I have lived some and feel less of a need to go anywhere in particular. I think I realised a while ago that I don't need to see everything here.
I think about the fact that I might not get to wander around Ireland this year, nor get to go on my last long haul flight to California to spend some time in the desert, Yosemite and with my west coast friends and family. I begin to see landscapes in my bedding as substitute - a training of the eye towards the here and now detail of the small world before me.
Anita was the last guest to my house at the edge of lockdown.
She brought spring daffodils .
I watched them dry out and they become sculptural. They have sat there since speaking to me of many things about this moment.
It's July and my brother is gone. He has disappeared into the realm we call death.
Too soon. Not now. Please.
We call it dead, passed away. It is as though he has been taken. And we wait for his return around a corner with a laugh.
He didn't die of COVID 19. His heart gave way under strain, under neglect, under the circumstances of a marriage that had rendered him isolated. I am full of regret for not reading the signs more rigourously. For not... a lot of guilt... so guild needs study because no one will accept that it is partly my fault, that we all seek to have anthe9r outcome by sketching out our 'if only" - we need to do that, we know it wasn't our fault but something in our make up is that not rational and this is one of the ways in which we try to unhappen an event, a loss.
This particular loss is a long story that began centuries of trouble ago.
July begins the season of grief whilst in the midst of a pandemic and a disruption to the hegemony of white supremacy and the botched up government that creates havoc with our lives. We are in the hands of corrupt and neglectful merchants of greed.
It's August 2020 now and my mother and I are spending time at my cousin's house.
A different place, some other people, some kind of distraction from that which can't be distracted from.
A place of escape, but also not. A change of scene in amongst the ongoing circumstances.
Whilst there I distracted myself for a short while with a large glass bottle. The light and shadow for a while on a window ledge at my cousin's house whilst we continued to wait and live in grief. Simple noticings in a world slowed down, in a world that calls for a stop, that does stop whilst everything also seems to carry on. I freeze the light and the shadow for a while and find some solace in the shapes that light, shadow and glass make.
I studied a book about envisioning anew. This is the dedication from Joyful Militancy by Carla Bergman & Nick Montgomery.
Move with fierce LOVE
In another month (to be clarified) I studied colour, light and movement from my bed courtesy of my subjects: light, a lampshade and a book cover. We don't need to go far to interpret and see the world anew, to appreciate colour and the soul of the eye that notices.
Grief practice: We borrow a dog and go for a walk in Sutton Park for several hours at a time. Grief needs to walk and the minding and enjoyment of a dog living its best life on a walk is a temporary ease for myself and my mother who gets to love a small creature for a while in the absence of her other son. Grief walks eat up time between hoped for sleep.
I saw my brother for a moment in this light and wished him well.
Train journey: leaving my mother behind for a while as I return to London. It's hard to leave the wretched grief of a mother for her son, my brother, my mother - I am 50% of sons left.
We are out on another walking whilst grieving tour of local parks. We stand quietly together watching shadows and water mingle and move. Something soothes the ache, that wretched ache that waits for the a heart that can embrace it softly for a while. The heart aches and knows no relief, then at some point it does and there is a softness for a while.
Hanging out the washing in 2020 : I am walking in Crystal Palace park and see my first masks hanging out on the washing line.
I am back in London, grief walking alone, although I am not alone really.
Hanging out the washing in 2020 : I am walking in Crystal Palace park and see my first masks hanging out on the washing line.
T'is a grand day for the drying.
A new routine and practice of care.
It's summer. I am back in London for a while. Grief came with me and yet there is space and outside is possible.
Grief practice: noticing as a distraction from a grief that has no notion of easing or leaving although I know it will in time. It does and then it doesn't. Then when it does it feels like a forgetting of my brother and a not begin with him.
It's March 2021, we are nearly at the anniversary of the first lock down. A whole year spent in doors. That's not true but it does feel that way despite walks, trips to the local shop and a summer spent in Birmingham attending to grief and loss. The dominant location being in doors with visits out that are usually marked with a series of stressful moments.
People without masks.
People who have no reckoning with 2 metres.
It seems we are out here regarding and disregarding each other.
Other bodies are navigated as potential dangers and the embodiment of neo liberal values plays out in an entitlement trumping the need and recognition for collective care. We are poorly trained for reality as bodies insist on what was and refuse shaping themselves around what is. This particular pandemic amongst the many the many troubles that are at play reveals the problem quite acutely - we are not we.
We don't navigate each other thoughtfully it seems, we are offended at the presence of the other. Then occasionally there is a mutual recognition that we really are in this together and for those moments I am glad of the connection, shared kindnesses - it can also be soft out there when it seems so hard.
In this moment I am queuing for my jab. My ankle is swollen from a twist on the stairs in my rush to get to the front door before the postie disappeared with my parcel. A book of photography that I was keen to sit with. I have missed my outings with camera and the visual gatherings I usually make. I have missed my yearly wander around Ireland too.
I land at the door in an agony, take the parcel and begin my accompanying of the pain in my ankle. It is the beginning of spring and plans to walk in the new light may have to go on pause.
As I sit in the car park awaiting the jab, someone is angry at having to wait. I am struck by how people continue to have expectations, entitlements and wonder how are we going to handle the disasters that are ahead of this moment as Fascism in its contemporary form takes its grip.
Those of us who are relatively privileged are at home and not quite witness to the horrors already unfolding.
They are there.