Further results from the Lockdown.

I was "chatting" to a Twitter-friend to-day who'd noticed I'm not posting much atm.(And @MrsSimpson, I believe, has followed my lead - though perhaps she's just busy with the Cholera Epidemic down there in Georgian Brighton? )

Not given much to the terse, spare prose of the Greats I explained my current strategy to this woman whom I have never met, but whom I count as a friend.

Not "Great" but at least terser and sparer, what it boiled down to was: I am not bullet-proof. Neither is anyone I love and admire. Statistically, the possibility of any of us being killed by bullets, however, is negligible in the face of You Know What. I am thus engaged in a Cunning Plan and am fine.

But of course, anxious to stress the significance of this, I had to include bits of background here and there, and to explain bits elsewhere - just to keep her up to speed. For instance: It’s a given that, even with the three week extension, I am not going to burst upon the world stage with The Book in the time it takes to a) evade b)not evade, The Virus. In fact, statistically there is a distinct possibility with which I have but recently become apprised: - I may not, in actual fact,  ever burst upon the world stage with The Book!

I discovered this  in the Ruminative Stage of Lockdown. The time when you take stock of the fact that, for the moment, reality has changed. so all the old rules no longer apply. You've taken careful note of all the areas in your house which need attention. Now that you have "the time" you have the perfect opportunity to make all those changes, so you'll get down to the nitty-gritty of dustballs and greasemarks after you've done all those renovations you've always put off. You could even decide to paint over them all.

Rather surprisingly, when you get right down to it, the whole DIY, Overhaul thing palls after an inordinately short time. With no escape from the smells of disinfectant and white spirit and woodshavings they're aren't quite so exciting as you'd considered. If you are me you start to think about the whole set of ramifications pertaining to your self-congratulation - that it's now been proved conclusively to all and sundry that time really is a human construction. You ignore the mess in the Hall and sit down to think of it.

You have entered the Ruminitive Stage.

 Now this is the very stage I've been dreading. For the past five years. I have learned, like my students in China, to pull the shutters down completely on all the bad things, and fill up the resulting void with as much as I possibly can. (So I won't wander too close to those shutters and maybe bang one open by mistake.) Having spent the past 5 years convinced I had waved my sanity away I was terrified of what would happen now that I had scrammbled out the rabbit-hole.  Into the Lockdown.

I slowly began to realise that, for the first time since I came to England I couldn't distract my mind on work, or deadlines, or projects, or going to endless talks and meetings and seminars and Openings and Showings.

Some of the shutters were starting to ease just a little; certain stray bits and pieces started to seep through - how it felt to be held by the throat up a wall and be so scared you wet yourself; what it was like trying to open the front door of your own home and be shaking so badly you couldn't work the key; I remembered waking in the night to chase an intruder from my sleeping son's room with a carving knife; lying in my bed and making decisions - whether to wake up a sleeping husband who would probably knock me from one side of the room to the other before I could tell him; or risking facing the group of presumably armed people currently trying to enter our house through the roof,  with only a golf-club and a pepper-pot to hand.

Which made me realise that, though I still feared opening the shutters, the least of all my worries was that I was going to die.  One thing about spending every waking moment of your life for a decade and a half knowing that THIS could be your last day ever - the fear goes away. It's a survival concept, I think.  There is no way your body can continue to be at peak preparadeness for danger - the levels of hormones pumping through, and the chemicals releasing into your system, (not to mention your bladder threatening to blow) are unsustainable on a continual basis. So your brain wisely decrees: - "Live? Die? - meh! So long as the children are ok it makes no difference. "

He's going to kill you one day? Que sera sera. As long as he doesn't do it in front of the kids, well hey, it'd be for the best: he'd be removed, the children would go to their god-parents and live a rich contented life.  Death simply becomes just another alternative.

Anyway, this was all the stuff behind what I did say to her.  There I was, babbling on about my own Psyche, happily engrossed in my own endlessly remarkable life, and how Death was not my Sting. And she responded. Supportingly, Gently, and  Understandingly. She sent me a photo of one of her children...and I suddenly felt as though I had swigged a bottle of "Drink me" potion: about two inches tall.

There was her child, luckily wearing a cap and mask and gown - about to go out on another shift on the frontline of those who aren't sitting at home ruminating. She's one of those who are currently having to come up with their own strategies in the face of suddent and present danger! 

And then I imagined how I would feel, every day, knowing there was nothing I could do to guarantee anything about my own child's life again - not when she slept, or when she ate, or how much protection she had. And I sank down in my desk-chair and felt like a humble vermiculate.

 I had said nothing to help this woman - hell, nothing to even interest her. Where had she pulled the forbearance from to wade through my me-soup? I was a cad, a rotter, a self-absorbed narcissist, a worthy candidate for the culling process.

HOWEVER...what will please her most, is that I have Ruminated on a different track now.

However much I know I might not have the strength to release the shutters behind the Bad Things, I realise that the small glimmers I've allowed into my conscious mind haven't sent me hurling into a corner dribbling and spitting. I survived.

So I can also imagine what it's like for those who are locked into their "homes"  with an abusive, violent partner. In fact it was one of my sons who brought it up, and we talked for a long while about what life like that must be like under the current circumstances:  sheer terror. Unrelenting. Unlimited. Unstoppable.

So I've made a resolve now, rather than just a hope.

No - I can't write a book within the next three weeks or however long it drags on for. But I've managed to be a writer all through my life without having ever having publishd a book.  I've done it by just communicating: - through articles, through my Columns, through radio plays, and TV scripts; from platforms and lecturns.  And though it's the third time in my life I've had to start all over from scratch establishing myself because in a new country where you're unknown, that's what it takes. I've just lost 6 years of that process...I haven't, after all abandoned all hope.

I am still going to roll in the grass with my dog, and watch the trees transform themselves, and drink in the beauty of an English Spring while walking the dog.  I'm still going to listen to music and talk about my son's new songs; I'm going to take long baths with a book or my kindle. These are all things I haven't done in 5 years - I've a lot to catch up on. But I'm going to learn how to keep those in my life, WITHOUT limiting my communication to only old friends & family. 

Because something else occurred to me: I'm a blabbermouth. I pour it all out whether anyone's listening or not. I'm programmed to communicate and I don't know where the "re-set" button is, in any case! So now that I'm no longer viewing the world through a glass darkly (well, not all the time - being bi-polar is never going to change!) I can finally see a direction forward. Something I've not had since the 3rd day after I arrived in England when I lost my future. It's not the direction I had planned, not the direction I came to England for, not the direction I ever envisaged: a humble one, but mine own. 

Most of all - it wouldn't have happened had not my twitter-friend not written to me.

So that one day, when my Grandson asks me "How did you get through The Great Lockdown of 2020 Glamma,?" there's a chance now that I might have helped someone, somewhere, somehow to get through it too. If I haven't, it won't be for lack of trying.  So I shall tell him "My boy, I ruminated." and be well content.