One step back

In this early stage of Covid vaccines we have hit a snag with our citizens. We have a spike and so our prime minister has decided to quarantine the entire island until the second to last week in May. The PM himself got the virus a few weeks ago, prooving once again that it can happen to anyone. We got a heads up from a friend who suspected that we were facing the very thing that was said at the press conference. We are still extremely luck here despite such a serious rollback. The government has done everything it can to keep people working on a staggered level. But Malls, restaurants and bars cannot open. This includes fast food restaurants. So I expect that as the prime minister has given to midnight for what he said to take effect, I can imagine how many people are going to automatically decide to run to the fast food places and order up to a ridiculous degree. This happened last year. I feel a bit of the fact that just as things have begun to feel a bit better, we now have this situation. But, again, our leader said that he could leave everything as is and then we can spend our time looking at an overwhelmed hosspitals and lots of funeral plots. Put that way it is clear that twenty-one days shall go by with a better understanding of what we need and must do as opposed to what has happened in India. I looked at the Covid-19 Bing.com map today, as I find that it is better to look at that than to take what I hear from the news media. I also have to say that I am grateful that I had a conversation with my second curator who pushed back my show to June. I believe that that is a good call. The present show that started on Monday is actually also a good call, as that gallery decided to make the show a virtual one. What is unfortunate is that you have so many people doing the right thing, and it only takes a few people who just take it lightly to push us all the way back. I really hope that this reversal will take.

Friends are calling to check in with us about the Covid-19 vaccine. They want to know how things are going in our country. We have been quite lucky. When I see what is going on in India my heart breaks for the people there who are struggling to find oxygen to save lives. Twenty-twenty may have felt brutal, but the slight familiarity of living in a pandemic has now, to me made brutality seem a bit common place. The stresses that we all undergo, yet move to the side in order to get things done cannot be understated. There is a pall over the world, and yet there is still so much beauty to enjoy. The trees are all blooming and the birds are singing and butterflies flit by and you are reminded that at least this pandemic is not like the ones history has mentioned in the past. Put into context we are extremely fortunate indeed. We do not have to be told that whole areas have been condemned. Our families are not being carted away like a mountain of disease and dispair. Governments have been so disappointing too, as they care more about the economy than people. People are also so tired of taking care that any chance to let down their guard is unfortunately easy to take and spikes turn up in some countries known for discipline. The world goes on and will go one and we just have to know that we will thrive. We shall get on the other side of all of this and remember it as something other generations shall learn from.

getting the vaccine

I went out today and as I was travelling and had time to contemplate the year, I first of all find that time is just racing by. I would also state that wearing your mask, sanitizing and social distancing when out has become second nature. When you get home, you change clothes, have a bath or wash up and if you hear a plane overhead, you watch it go by because it is no longer common to hear them. Traffic when you travel is not too bad, and between stores, there are now an occassional boarded up business. The apocalypse isn't a dark, dreary blue black...according to covid-19 it is a dull colourless sort of zombie-esk feeling when you look at the landscape. The beautiful trees that bloom at this time of year have provided a reprieve, but they are not as plentiful as years past. It is weird as well that there is a tiredness from doing way less than one normally would on a given day. But also, tired based on doing lots of things that you would not ordinarily do on a normal day...but way more online work. The staying in one spot and the only reprieve being eating and drinking...the monotony can be draining. Yet, life is going on. Plans are stillbeing made. There is still hope. It is just that the vaccine and the virus are not proving to be bringing anything back to normalcy. To read about all of the strains that are suddenly cropping up and that some vaccines are not absolutely guaranteed cause all of us some concern. My families friends are all calling and asking the same questions and making the same statements about whether or not they would take the vaccine. All say that they would prefer to see what can happen in the next three, six, nine and year ahead before they commit. Meanwhile our Prime Minister got the virus just a week after the vaccine was freighted to us. To then top it off, a neighboring island has just experienced a vocanic eruption...you cannot make these things up! Dramas abound. You have to balance your emotions, balance your life....hold on to your job or jobs....try to think about how to do better in the months ahead and just keep juggling. I think the best thing is that this is happening to everyone on the planet.No one is isolated here. We are all feeling all of these things, and I am grateful.

understanding

A few weeks ago there was an excellent documentary on the life of Ernest Hemingway. I believe that Ed Burns did the production. One of the things that caught me from the mouth of the Author was that you simply have to live your life. Live it. Experience it. That's it. Somehow that was just enough. Perfect. You know this and have heard it a million times. Coming from the great Nobel Laureate, I would state another famous saying...JUST DO IT.

The other side

I learned something so important tonight, and I feel a little sad about it. I completed the project with my cousin today, so I took the opportunity to speak with her about my sister. As I listened to my cousin it became clearer and clearer to me that it is so easy to only consider one side of a story. Listen too long and you think that it is the only story. Hearing her, her perspective sounded like my sisters, but standing from her vantage point, and I saw the struggles between them. The whole thing just sounded so out of proportion when my sister was getting louder and more aggitated. That was the first realisation that the conversation was not about her surface concerns. I am sad about all of this because of how many times I have focused on how I feel and not cared to consider the other person's perspective. I would state that I usually do do so, but there have been times when my way has been more important. There is no hard and fast rule. Of course you want to do as little harm as possible to another person, but you sometimes make mistakes, big and small. It is the wasted time that gets to me. My cousin was as balanced as she could be when giving me her views. Of course I think of my arguments with my ex-husband that got so far beyond the ability to resolve that shutting up and shutting down and eventually getting out was the only answer I could see. In the end, I just said to her that I would understand if she chose to do nothing about my sister at all. There is only so much anyone can do when they also feel that they have not been treated well. Two people with strong personalities stand on a playing field and they should be able to bring their best to the table. But sometimes one person gets wise to leaving the arena. It just is what it is.

Would you guess

About six years ago my cousin and I had a conversation where my sister's name came up and my cousin responded in a very flippant way. I called her on her statement and then I told my sister about it because it annoyed me and I felt that she needed to know. Decades before, we had agreed that we would always be true to each other about anything that upset us about the other. In our family, we were the children of the most successful couple. To us, everyone else seemed to be successful as well. No one was lacking for anything. However, the other siblings and spouses would talk about our parents for sport. We grew up aware of the challenge and the duplicity. It was particularly upsetting to my sister and I because all of the siblings would act one way behind our parents back and another to their face. Thus the decision to never be that way with each other as we grew to adulthood. My cousin recently reached out to me to do some freelance work for her and I accepted. Last night my mother decided to discuss my project with my sister. The next thing you know, my sister is calling me and shouting on the phone and all up in her feelings about our cousin. She even calls me disloyal to take up a job with her. Waw! I listened, I stayed calm, I apologised to my sister. I confronted the word disloyal and then promised to discuss the whole kettle of fish (lol) with our cousin after I complete the job. This morning, now that a few hours has passed between the conversation and my contacting our cousin again, I am here writing about it. Listening to my sister, I hear her emotions stirring up in the most irrational way. But I can only write that here. She is feeling genuinely hurt. The story she is telling is one of wanting whatever construct she has designed to go as she wants it to go. So this means, I factor in her narrative in a certain way and so does our cousin. My seeing it from the outside gives me a certain vantage point. When I am in situations, I too of course am holding to my beliefs completely teeth clenching, white knuckling the matter. Thus I am really trying to put myself in her position to understand where all of the emotions are coming from. Yet, in so doing, I also see what she is not saying. I dealt with this last year with my friend who has called me a bitch since my father has died. Who knew that everyone is so tightly wound up? Perhaps I am also equally sensitive? Today, the needs people have to have their emotions attended to has left me a bit staggered. I question what it all means? How much of it is delusion and how much a simple response to who we are as human beings?

A good tired

I have been burning my candle at both ends and in the middle. But the results are good. However, I am going to take some time to have a proper rest after I complete the bulk of the things that I am doing now. I exercise in the morning and today I waited for a lady I met yesterday who looked at my weights and mentioned that she needs a pair but has lost her job. I offered her a pair that I have. The mornings are moments when I can have some me time. But after not walking for almost a year, I am still trying to find a new routine for myself. What I was doing before has changed. I am fortunate that there are many choices for walking. I was out today, and despite covid-19, people are bustling about, all masked. My eyes settled on one or two vendors as the bus I took stopped to let off passengers. One young man was especially admirable as hehad a very neat cart with a huge canvas umbrella. From my vntage point I saw that he had a folding chair under his neat table. He was selling three types of cut up fruit, also preserved mango. If I were stopping off at that location I would have given him a sale. There was also a man selling DVD's. I thought that that was definitely a think of the past. They all looked like washed out photography from my perspective. What a windy day it was today. There is a combination of quiet and selective sounds in our covid world. The teenagers you see on the road in their uniforms no longer congregate in boisterous bunches. Taxi drivers line up to get your attention and pull off with three people and not the usual four. I notice that more and more vendors are selling a variety of fruit, and vegetables. The prices are also good. A store I used to buy tee-shirts and soft shorts from has been replaced by a licore store. That was unexpected. Some large banks have closed extra branches, and people wait outside main ones, socially distanced. The groceries are doing a brisk trade. We hear the sound of one plane from time to time, such a surprise to the system that it is marked in ones thoughts as having happened. Someone is building a house in the mountain nearby, and watching the red soil is a shock, as it is easy to believe that life as we know it has changed so much that such things are just not happening. Yet, today I saw new cars on the road. It is such irony to be living is such contrasts as the world says one thing, gevernment says another and life is as always, doing what it does.