Grave Matters

As the coronavirus continues to sweep away freedoms hitherto taken for granted, ordinary pleasures are harder to come by.  Fortunately I live in a town small enough to allow for daily walks without creating gatherings of two or more.  My long, solitary strolls have offered me the opportunity to pay attention to a wealth of mystery and beauty found in nature's details.  Since the only other things I can do outside of the home are purchase essential items for isolated, indoor living, walking in familiar territory has become much more interesting.
Instead of standing back and admiring a beautiful scene, now  I get up close and personal.  I look at the bark of trees as I've never done before.  I lay my hands on the trunk and feel the crusty folds of the bark.  I see the beauty of dead and decaying matter that is returning back into the earth.  A dead tree trunk in a graveyard holds as much significance for me  as the gravestones that surround it. 
In order to make life more interesting, i.e., magical, I've always sought meaning in the seemingly mundane.  Now I feel as if all that exists is interesting,  simply because I'm alive to appreciate it.  It gives credence to the expression that life is a gift, something I haven't always believed.  And covid-19 has had a hand in converting me.  Go figure.
I look at the world more microscopically now.  My scrutiny has provided me with a better  understanding of all matter, both living and dead.  I've come to realise that a cemetery contains as much life as it does death.  I feel as if I matter because I am matter, just like the dead vegetation that inspires me.

On one of my recent rambles along the river that runs through the town's massive graveyard, I heard a woman screaming with an otherworldly ferocity that carried on for several minutes.  Concerned that someone might be in danger, I followed the sound of the terrible shrieking to its source.  Eventually I saw a young woman on the opposite side of the river.  She had her back pressed up against a wire fence, arms spread wide in Christ-like fashion, as she howled like a banshee.  Seeing a mortal woman wailing like an  otherworldly being known to herald the arrival of death, and in a graveyard no less, was truly eerie.  Even the most prosaic of people would have found the scene worthy of a horror story.  It was dramatic irony at its creepy best, and truly weird* in the deepest sense of the word. 
(*from the Norse wyrd, meaning fate and the web of entwined human destinies.)

Not everything I encounter in the graveyard invokes feelings of foreboding, however.  Although I don't know anyone who's buried there, I am often flooded with memories of loved ones long gone.  Even as my mind wanders through the corridors of my past, I feel completely rooted in the present, and grateful to be here. 
Finding pleasure in weird stuff is easy, whereas delighting in  ordinary, everyday things is another matter entirely.  Yet covid-19 is managing to do that for me.  Now I feel sensuous gratification in doing something as banal as buying soap.  Although I probably have more soap than I need right now (goddess forbid I should  become a hoarder), it's become a pleasure to spend time shopping - at a safe distance - for luxuriously scented, handmade, all natural, and minimally packaged soap.  (I admit that sometimes I bend my own rules, as can be seen in the accompanying picture.)

Everything that's out there, no matter how ordinary it may seem, matters to me more.  I'm finding a little beauty and purpose in all that is - even the dreaded coronavirus.  That's because it has humbled humanity and brought us to our knees, an appropriate posture for prayer.  Humility becomes us better than hubris, which is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Anyway, I'm still hugging Francis, (see Hugs All 'Round, 3/17) and am now embracing his sister/neighbour tree Hildegard.  (I named her after Saint Hildegard von Bingen - medieval mystic, healer, herbalist, poet, musician and more. )  It's good to have physical contact with a living, breathing being.  As for human huggery, I'm still giving out big, fat air-hugs whenever I can, while doing my best to ensure that the only thing I'm spreading is cheer and good will.  And it's not even Christmas.
I suppose all my recent blurbs are a way of making lemonade out of lemons.  But covid-19 isn't just sour, it's tainted.  It saddens me to know that my sudden burst of creativity has come at such a high price. I'd prefer to be inspired by something less dire and isolating.  Yet despite keeping my distance from everyone, I've never felt more a part of this world.
So mote it be. 
- g.p.