I’ve written books and didn’t find the experience pleasant: I’d go underground for 2 or 3 or 4 years, maybe 5, and when I’d stick my head up into the light of the world again, the world was changed. Like, during one of my underground sessions, the internet took hold and when I surfaced, the print magazines for which I’d written were saying their last goodbyes. Or during another session, my job whisked out from under me and ok, I was sick of academia anyway and worse yet, now that I was free to only write, I found I was also sick of my writing. All of this is to say, coming out of the pandemic is a lot like coming out of a book: new world, what the hell?
And of course even when it’s over, it’s not over. Just like page proofs have to be corrected and publicity has to be arranged and endured, the pandemic has its upticks and new variants and friends suddenly cancelling afternoon teas.
Meaning, I don’t know how to live in what remains of the past and simultaneously figure out how the present is different. I think this is a liminal state, neither land nor water but some kind of uncertain swamp in between. I do hate uncertainty which, too bad because at this point in time, the swamp is the rule, it’s non-negotiable, it’s the boundary condition.
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“Boundary condition” means different things to different scientists but in general it’s the immovable thing that can’t be changed, only worked within. A river running along a granite wall has to run parallel to the wall: the wall sets the boundary condition.
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One thing for sure: given current boundary conditions, I need therapy. Every week, I meet with a psychotherapist and a physical therapist; and every day I practice both. Shoulders back and down. Speak kindly to myself. Run my fingers up to door frame to the top. Separate the anxiety from the situation that’s provoking it. Hold a stretchy band in both hands with elbows at the side and pull my hands apart. Figure out what’s so frightening about wanting comfort. Lie down and slowly punch my arms into the air. Think of life’s little epiphanies. The tiny black hummingbird is at the feeder and the sun hits it just so and it turns iridescent green, and it drinks and drinks and then its head pops up and it winks out of space and time, gone.
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Once I was in the woods, writing, in a cabin with a grand piano in it and a piano player needed to practice so I said sure, while you play I can write. I couldn’t. She worked her way through two volumes of Beethoven sonatas, and while Beethoven seems to write in sentences, his sentences were more complicated than mine and much more interesting so I got distracted and meanwhile she filled up the cabin with the Waldstein, up to the peaked roof, every atom of air in that cabin moved by Beethoven. I was breathing Beethoven.
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How many years ago was that? Twenty? Thirty? I’m at the age where you don’t suddenly lose days or months or years, you lose decades. Getting old: another liminal state. I’m sticking my head out of the ground from the pandemic just in time to face old-age planning. Also someday, not as far away as it used to be, is death, another boundary condition. I have no particular reason to think about death but I am aware of the time. How can all this life just go away? I will miss it all so much. I look at the hummingbird, the little kids in my tree, the lottery card the neighbor leaves on my porch, other neighbors having a kids-in-bed girl-party on their porch, the extraordinary mix of people at the farmers’ market united in their focus on peaches and sweet corn, and I get blinded by loss; I don’t want to ever leave this. My therapist gets a little snippy: then don’t, she says, it’s all out there, you don’t need to miss it now.
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Sticking a head up in the middle of a patch of dense, tall, intense green, ferny amsonias is a pale magenta phlox. I had deleted all the phlox years ago because it wasn’t flowering much and got terrible fungus, and I dug it all out. And yet years later, there it is. New world: what the hell? The phlox had been white and this pale magenta guy had to go back into its ancestry for its color and its will to live. “I’m here,” it says, “I am what I am and I’m here. Make of that what you will.”
Also, given these trying boundary conditions, it says “just do the best you know how.”
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Photo by me and it looks like it.
I feel this
I distinctly recall, while in 1st grade, that the 8th graders looked so grown up. Then in 8th grade I thought the high school students looked so grown up. As a Freshman, I thought the Seniors were so grown up. Then in college, I thought the 4-year graduates were so grown up. When I became a dad, I thought my grandparents were so grown up. Now that I am a grandfather, I think my grandsons are having fun in life while I do my best to act grown up. Your experience and your writing leads me to accept I’ve encountered repeated boundary conditions, likely ones I either didn’t know or will eventually know as boundary conditions. What I do know is that I find out who and what I am based upon the walls I keep banging up against. I reckon I might try painting some of the walls I bang up against.
I love that, painting some of the walls I bump against,
I might just mosaic them.
I love that — figuring out who you are by what walls you’re banging against.
Hmm, maybe a topic for Friday.
so, is that your own yard? it looks like a jungle.
Yes, Tim, that’s my yard. But the photo is taken artfully so you see only the green and the phlox. Which doesn’t mean it’s not a jungle but I’ll never admit it.
Christie suggested this and it is perfect and very apropos for me in my current boundary conditions
Extremely lovely, thank you!
You got me this time, Finkbeiner.
It’s a DMZ for me. So recently I was on the offensive or, on a given day, on the defensive. Now I’m inert, enjoying some R&R and awaiting orders.
Enjoy that R&R, Chris, enjoy the hell out of it. I like your DMZ analogy — it’s like liminality, isn’t it, only with guns and mines at the other end.
I love this, Ann! I love this Ann! (and all the Anns).
This is so good, so true, I need a drink or a smoke!
Beautiful. Thanks for poking your head out long enough to share.
Writing for all of us standing in the field or at the door, looking at the boundaries or leaving them behind for the new one. Thank you for your understanding and your words.
You must’ve heard me thinking. Coming out of COVID is strange because the world “looks” the same, but somehow it’s out of focus. The light’s different or there’s a hesitance between people that wasn’t there before. Or is that even different. People were getting weird even before COVID. Holding their gathered posies against their breasts to protect them from a strange flower offered by a stranger.
I always enjoy your writings, your thoughts if you will! I need to come sit on your porch again soon! Or, you come sit on mine!
Yes, Darcie, one of us needs to be on the other one’s porch. And thank you for writing.
I do thank you all for replying. I’m glad to be in such good company.
Remember that coastal habitats are among the most productive, vibrant, and important in the planet. Got to be tough and flexible there, but it’s rich beyond compare.
Wonderful writing! Thank you.
I had never thought of aging as a liminal place, thank you.
Here in the UoSA, the thought of being truly old is terrifying (unless you managed the whole ‘have a house and a million in savings’ trick).
Still young enough to think about making changes, but too experienced to have the youthful expectation of positive results. Certainly is a liminal place.