Reality subsides for a moment

I’ve decided to create a list of scenes or random blurbs of writing that I will compile and post. They will be just musings from my head, ones that I will edit (albeit loosely), to keep something going for a while. I feel that vague musings (or silhouettes) may lead to something interesting, content for people who like vignettes or old French black and white movie scenes. Yet, it will continue to be writing just for myself. Faded photograph and yellowed typescript aesthetic here.

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I admit to being one of several people at the beginning of February last year that found Covid-19 to be harmless, a fleeting entity. Obviously, those initial impressions faded quickly as the virus began its long-term stay with no known check-out date, and everyone began searching for things to do in quarantine. Things to do besides acting a fool in the grocery store’s household goods and toilet tissue sections. And still, from there, everything kind of settled into a strange, cosmic whirl of fading scenes and feelings. Nothing much affected me immediately, just the stuff going on in “the world,” a concept so far away from my being yet still perpetuated many thoughts and feelings and anxieties.

So I went for a walk. And another one. And another one.

Humor aside, people got outside more here in suburban Atlanta. Swarms of people suddenly rediscovered the outdoors. Contrary to my conscious decision to make this activity a daily habit, I take regular walks as often as possible anyway, as detailed in other posts. I try to be acute and aware of the ever-changing attitudes I have toward things, and the simple “walk round the neighborhood” became something of a wistful, reflective wind down, a pastime to exert stored up energy seeping from wells I didn’t realize I possessed. Something necessary. Aside from the ill effects of having many job applications rejected and the pressing weight of increasing stress from the job I have now, the walk symbolized something I could look forward to, something that didn’t cost money, something that could be exploited and no one would get hurt.

Springtime in the south is infinitely worse than springtime in other places. Pollen dusts everything with a lemon pie yellow color, and heavy rains dare the trees to produce more. The noxious odors of Bradford Pear trees leap up on winds that run in through open windows, and a lack of on hand allergy medicine spells doom for some people. And still, whatever happened at work, or whatever resided in an emailed reply, the walk seemed to quell my bouts of anger or stress or resentment toward the world. It began to rival driving as the activity that puts a smile on my face more than anything else.

Springtime gives way to summer way too early for my tastes, and summer down here lasts anywhere from five to eight months out of the year (and summer can be compartmentalized as the period when temperatures remain at eighty degrees or more for the majority of the day, week, and month). Despite the one-hit knock-outs of humidity, heat, and random storms, the south softens my general distaste of summer with elegant displays of color in the evenings. Swirls of rainbow sherbet dye themselves on the edges of shapely clouds, and the summer sun exits the world and leaves in its place a satisfactory peace that didn’t previously exist. The calm of night settles gracefully. It’s lively and relieving to witness Van Gogh-like paintings in the sky fading out, giving me the impression that I accomplished something in the days’ hours, even if that thing was waking up.  

Summer relinquishes its tight grip on the earth to a Fall that, despite contriving a vogue entrance into a world wrought with fresh, seemingly daily heartache, seemed to linger a little more than I’ve noticed in the past. Perhaps I’ve been attuned to nuances of the outdoors more so now that they’ve become my wholehearted route of escape. The air is tangy and nippy without being overly indulgent and heavy; the very definition of crisp, and nothing more. Sunlight pierced through chlorophyll-free leaves blanketing everything with an orange hue that, every time, reminds me of elementary Thanksgiving breaks. My nose is pleasantly chapped red, and I get to make use of my many cardigans like one should in the Autumn. And all the lovely poems I endured in school but have fallen deeply for in my adulthood offer their warm embraces, warm in a way that, with everything this past year cindered us with, is more deeply realized.

Once Christmas rolled around, and the dirtiness seemed to subside for a collective moment, I stopped going out on my daily or nightly strolls round the neighborhood. I don’t know whether to blame it on the business or nature of the season or the confirmed sighting of holiday coyotes (read kie-yotes) in the cul-de-sacs. I feel like I lived a full year by the substantial feelings of weather on my skin: the warmth, the heat, the sweat, the sun, the wind, the chill, the bite, the frost. Sweeping colors of dusk brushed across a southern sky, the difficulties of the day and the world fading for a succinct moment before I turn the key in the lock of the house and call it. A mere, fleetingly philosophical reminder that life can be good, even in my uncertainty (my legs may stop working when I wake up the next morning. Maybe I won’t even wake up the next morning. The certainty isn’t guaranteed.) It’s another great reminder to myself and my overactive brain that value is everywhere. To feel it and recognize it daily is a gift.

It became the lovely unwinding ritual I craved day in and day out because I could feel relief. I could gaze up at the colors, the stars, or the clouds of an ending cycle and be front and center of the universe for a moment so ephemeral yet so unrelenting; wonderous feelings that for the next forty-five to sixty minutes, the only things I can relish are the galaxies crossing my line of view, bringing me back to a place where I was in the passenger seat of life, watching the world go by, worry-free, non-illusory. Innocent, even. I don’t wish to return to that time, but it’s nice to have the remembrance of those feelings expressed in something as poetic as the sunsets and the stars.

I’ve got a quote from Roald Dahl posted on my corkboard: “And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

If I try to live by anything, it is this.

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Monica Heldal — Glitter in Golden

Monica Heldal — Ravensdale Reprise

Above & Beyond — Peace of Mind

The Paper Kites — Steal My Heart Away