Incubation

As Pandemic-time lingers, a paradoxical blend of experience struck me this week. The waves of emotion shift as I read the next news story, talk with a friend, or listen fully to the reality of my clients.

Many of the people I listened to this week are nurses who are at the raw edge of what is required to care for those who are ill and those who love them. They are all struggling with the demands of endurance and the toll it is taking on them and those they lead. They are simultaneously courageous and committed while also terrified, exhausted and angry. It is hard to make sense of the swirl of human need.

Unable to be in an ICU to help, I feel guilty for not doing enough. Listening seems like such a small contribution and compassion feels trite. And yet, it is what I have to offer right now. I can give my presence and share my own experience through words. I hope it gives solace in some small way.

Incubation
I cannot take my eyes off of
the vista, the reassuring ridge of
jagged mountains, lined with secret
crevices and folds.

Full of distant mystery, undulations
of granite bathed in
shadows of green.
Courageously holding
each other up.

I cannot stop staring.
Hours pass, as
clouds form,
reform, and push
onward toward the moment
of release.

Rain seeping into distant
valleys. There will be little
risk of fire today.

I cannot stop crying.
My heart crushed by
deep sadness, and fear.
Once numbed by
habit and compulsion, now
exposed by the Great Stopping.

Collective threads of
hope and dread, woven
into the air, carried by the wind.
Confusion is
everywhere.

Silently, suffering permeates
the room. It finds me
in my corner chair,
removed from everything. It
overwhelms me.

I cannot stop wondering.
What comes next? What nuanced
and subtle morphing in the
human landscape, is
already taking root?

I cannot stop breathing.
Inhale and exhale
have replaced,
the breath-holding,
that I once called living.

(c) April 8, 2020
Debra Gerardi
Santa Barbara, CA

All people visited upon

A poem in the midst of a pandemic…

All People Visited Upon

The squish

beneath my bare feet

as I pad down

the stairs in the dark of

Sunday morning.

Light reveals

the spatter and spray of

cat vomit.

A reassuring reminder,

like the comforting aroma

of coffee wafting from

my silent kitchen,

that

some things

are eternal.

Some things are

unchanged by thirteen days

of Shelter-in-Place, by

the ticker count of the death toll,

scrolling next to the stock market

arrows, marking an

abhorrent nexus designed

to stoke fear.

Am I changed?

With routines interrupted, and

my senses heightened by

diminished noise, I hear

pre-dawn owls hooting,

eerily loud. Have they

gotten closer,

or bolder?

Pear blossoms scream,

their white froth and their cloying scent,

nearly committing an assault.

A startling shift from their

common backdrop,

as a seasonal prop for the entrance

of spring.

The impossible weight

of the bumblebees, their

black velvet mass pushing off,

from yellow mustard, to the

blindingly bright orange poppies, swollen

with pollen and heavy

with hope.

The air is imbued with

eucalyptus and pine, leaving a

stringent taste in my mouth,

as I walk through

desolate streets, toward

the harbor and its pulsing

rise and fall of boats.

Their riggings singing a hushed lullaby,

nestled in the cradle of a gentle tide.

The ever-present cold

of Northern California sea water,

my ankles numbed by the

ease of the caressing waves and

bubbling sand.

The rhythmic briny swirl

inviting me to join with

slow time.

Have ‘all people been visited upon’ by this

sensuous pandemic, this emergence of

heightened awareness?

Has everyone been infected

with the remembered sense

of interconnection?

Has the quiver of knowing, that

patiently waits

to be awakened in the depths of

human consciousness,

touched off a cascade of symptoms?

Am I alone?

Or have others experienced the

grace of simple joys.

Has the painful surge of gratitude,

spread to every town?

Have you felt

the gift of deep presence,

that surrounds the task of

caressing warm

cat hack at dawn?

Debra Gerardi

(c) March 29, 2020

Half Moon Bay, CA

What Opens You Up?

“The courage to hear and embody opens us to a startling secret, that the best chance to be whole is to love whatever gets in the way, until it ceases to be an obstacle.”

— Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

I have just returned from a family wedding and the joyous celebration of a new start and the witnessing of a new partnership filled with possibility. Having just ended my own marriage this past year, the happy event was littered with opportunities for feeling the heavy swirl of emotions that accompany difficult transitions.

Surrounding this event are concurrent experiences of friends who are swimming in their own rapids- one who prepares to send her middle child off to college with the fear and joy that accompany launching a fledgling whose wings are still wet; and another who is struggling with the sudden serious illness of his partner of many years and the terror that travels with the loss of control that accompanies those life transitions we do not wish for or plan.

In each of our collective experiences, we are faced with the choice of opening up to what we are experiencing and exploring with curiosity the nooks and crannies of the human terrain, or to close down to protect and defend ourselves against the fear that comes with loss and change. What stands out as a beacon of hope for me is the existence of choice. We can choose to be open to what is emerging or we can choose to become rigid and closed, insisting or wishing that things be different than they are. And so today I reflect on what opens me up. How do I mentally shift toward an open stance?

Certainly, my improv training has been a true pathway for exercising my flexible-brain, the open and receptive me. As improvisers we practice repeatedly, re-learning how to play from that childlike place of non-judgment and curious exploration. The resulting feeling of flow as new realities emerge beat-to-beat is intoxicating and keeps us coming back to the practice again and again. Carrying that euphoric feeling into other interactions and situations has served to help me stay open in more serious venues. I engage as a mediator in conflict situations with curiosity and playfulness which helps deescalate fear and invite connection. The practice of openness has helped me as a critical care nurse to notice, “What is needed now?” for a patient in distress. And as a coach, the improv training helps me to connect with my clients and be open to their story, their ideas, and their solutions for moving toward their imagined future. Turning this openness toward my interior world also proves to be useful.

Exploring more deeply what interrupts my openness and noticing when my ‘defender’ is triggered takes me into the source waters where the opportunity for choice resides. I discover in the moment the felt need to defend or protect myself as it arises and I notice in that moment there is also a choice- despite how instantaneous and automatic it may feel to constrict.  I can notice my fear and I can choose to seek safety or I can choose to explore. This is as true on stage as it is in life. Picking through the rubble of old stones that are strewn about my psyche and turning each one over yields good insights about how easily fear can conjure up a dragon at the gate to keep my open and curious child from wandering too far from the castle walls. More on this later!

For now, I sit in wonder, how will I stay open today? How can my curious-self rise up like a mist over the craggy rocks that protect the tender roots of my being?