Getting Closer to the Ground

Los Angeles, California (Yep. Still.)

I was a figure skater who couldn't master the sit spin. A gymnast who couldn't do the splits. A dancer who could not get my chest to the floor in a straddle stretch. Until now. Ok, not really. I am still not flat to the floor. But I am getting closer. Note: A straddle stretch is a position where you sit on the floor with legs in a wide V and stretch your upper torso towards the floor in front of you. In case you didn't know... Not that it's important to know this.

Why this could possibly matter in the middle of a pandemic is a good question. My fairly-new friend, Beth2 (number-named by me because I also have a Beth1, and an ex-Beth), recently commented that I was "doing the most while at home" of anyone she knows. I doubt that. I think we are all finding our way through these times as we do without company and the comfort of most of the components of our pre-pandemic daily lives. When we first went into lockdown, I immediately drew up a schedule. I thought I would be doing pilates several days a week and subscribed to an online pilates site. I was cleaning my own house for ten weeks, until Ana returned to see what a mess I had made of it. Seriously, housecleaning is a skill and if you haven't done it for awhile, you forget products/techniques, as well as how much effort is required. In addition to the pilates and housecleaning, I intended to devote entire days to writing, as that is something that has generally given me a needed, calming focus. I also toyed with the idea of finally reading Ulysses.

Instead, my life shortly became about hard workouts, long telephone and Facetime conversations, cooking, drinking, watching too much CNN and cleaning out closets. None of this was on that initial schedule, but some of it has worked out for me. Not that I am breezing through this time. At night, I fall into restless sleep after the bubbling up of the bleak and anxious thoughts I kept at bay during the day. And I wake up every morning with some resignation to visualize another page flying off the calendar, as in those old movie montages. I want to see enough pages flit by that the summer passes. I am taking it a season at a time, and trying not to reflect on its aspect of wishing my life away.

The positives have been about weaning myself off of CNN (which hasn't diminished romantic fantasies about Sanjay Gupta), curtailing the scotch, and getting my nose closer and closer to the floor in that straddle stretch. Many of my closets are impressively organized. And I am getting to know new friends better through email correspondence, or Facetime happy hours. I am continuing to connect with old friends through daily texts, or frequent long telephone conversations. And I am back here, writing again.

Life has changed for everyone. And while we have a choice as to how to spend this time, it can be a circuitous route to figure out what really works for each of us. I don't feel like I have filled my time especially well. Rather, I feel I have found a way to fill it in a necessarily productive manner. If I had vegged out on multiple cable TV series, I would simply not have survived. But then, even in the best of times, I have never been a binge-watcher of anything, despite the previous post, Bounce, where I described bouncing back and forth between two series. I tend to utilize those marathons to keep me company while I attend to projects. Since I have replaced CNN as my go-to, when I actually do sit down to watch something, I choose old movies, or reruns of a couple of old TV shows, where I can find some wit. I do better with half-hour episodes, as I have a hard time staying put for much longer than that. But I have always been like that, so the pandemic can't be blamed.

In addition to learning more about the lives of new and old friends, I have learned a lot about myself through this. I have learned that I can sometimes drag myself into my designated space for a workout, confident that I will not have the energy to warm up, much less do 45 minutes of aerobics and an additional 30-40 of weight and floor work. But then I surprise myself by pushing the aerobics to 50 minutes and adding additional weight to my upper body workout. I have learned that eliminating scotch (tequila/wine/IPA) from my weekday nights was ridiculously easy. I have learned that I still hate tofu, kale, and any product referred to as milk that didn't come from a cow -- but that is another post altogether.

So, if we are only halfway through this, God willing, I will learn a lot more about myself and about my friends and about the world out there. And maybe just maybe, for the first time in my life, I will get my face down to the floor in that straddle stretch. I don't think of this as a noble goal. I mean, I could have aspired to learn a language. Then again, is it any less noble than baking sourdough bread, I ask myself..? Something to ponder in the calm of that ever-extending stretch, as those calendar pages continue to whiz by. Thank you for reading my blog.