Long Crossing

Yesterday I basically ran out of steam. I know it’s way too soon to feel knocked down, and I snapped out of it, but it certainly is daunting. I fear we are in for a long haul, which is bad enough, but then we simultaneously have many in power at the highest levels working against us. I don’t need to go into it. You know what I mean.

So for now we are sheltering in place, hoping to keep danger at bay and outside of our perimeters, hoping to stay safe and do no harm, to ride this thing out, to flatten the curve. I’m one of the lucky ones. I get to stay home at this ranch, a place which embraces us and dazzles us and sometimes doesn’t even seem real. In the afternoon I stood on the shore and saw San Miguel Island etched sharply on the horizon, midnight blue, with strips of white sand. A yellow freight train clattered along a curving track near the coast, and at sea a whale was breaching and blowing, its enormous body intermittently visible above the water, shining.

I am an exile in wonderland, but I’ve always had porous borders—I know that all’s not well out there. And I realize that “sheltering in place” assumes one has a place, and plenty of people don’t. I have never been so acutely aware of the interconnectedness of all, and the contagion of vulnerability. 

But maybe that isn’t entirely terrible, because it’s likely to be accompanied by the contagion of courage and kindness and enlightenment. Is it not? This is what I need to believe. And it’s too early to know, but maybe we will transcend.

These strange days will reveal everyone’s true nature...and also lay bare underlying problems that we have long needed to address. It’s going to be a long, rough crossing over uncharted waters, beneath starless skies. We can’t let the compass fall from our hands. There is a true north of decency and reason and compassion. And we are a teachable species; we learn from science and experience and build upon what we learn.

I just hope we will rise to the occasion. Maybe we will. Possibility is a vast realm.