Spring 2020
An in progress study on Isolation during the 2020 Corona-virus global pandemic.
“There are degrees and kinds of solitude. An island in a lake has one kind; but lakes have boats, and there is always the chance that one might land to pay you a visit. A peak in the clouds has another kind; but most peaks have trails, and trails have tourists. I know of no solitude so secure as one guarded by a spring flood; nor do the geese, who have seen more kinds and degrees of aloneness than I have. So we sit on our hill beside a new-blown pasque, and watch the geese go by. I see our road dipping gently into the water, and I conclude (with inner glee but exterior detachment) that the question of traffic, in or our, is for this day at least. debatable only among carp.”
April, A Sand County Almanac; and sketches here and there by Aldo Leopold.
THE SECRET
Some things that fly there be, —
Birds, hours, the bumble-bee:
Of these no elegy.
Some things that stay there be, —
Grief, hills, eternity:
Nor this behooveth me.
There are, that resting, rise.
Can I expound the skies?
How still the riddle lies!
- Emily Dickinson
Aren’t you afraid of the places in between? As you work your magic on the trees and air don’t you worry that the grass will get jealous of your diverted attention? Minds can become dangerously over crowded, too many things to remember, thoughts to re discover maybe it’s time to cast them aside and move on to better days. I regret the days you will not have, time lost with the blood rushing to your head (2019).
Tuned In
The ordinary is a circuit that’s always tuned in to some little something somewhere.
A mode of attending to the possible and the threatening, it amasses the resonance in things. It flows through cliches of the self, agency, home, a life.
It pops up as a dream. Or it shows up in the middle of a derailing. Or in a simple pause.
It can take off in flights of fancy or go limp, tired, done for now.
It can pool up in little worlds of identity and desire.
It can draw danger.
Or it can dissipate, leaving you standing.
by Kathleen Stewart from Ordinary Affects.
