It was supposed to be the year of balnce, the score for perfect vision, when things universally might be righted, adjusted. Instead, it was a another thing entirely: plague year; contagion from Covid-19. And now the last days drag by, darkening at four-ish, though the solistice means we are getting a minute more of daylight each day.
Mostly, I looked out my window. In February, I’d planned to be in Paris with a group. Instead, I lingered at my balcony window, and watched three successive nestings of a pair of industrious mourning doves. I watched the hummingbirds run riot over a pot of Wendy’s Wish salvia planted with Love and Kisses. I read an awful lot and then I began to watch an awful lot of tv. I logged seven hours one winter night with Scandinavian drama lightened by Danish seaside comedy. I forced myself reluctantly to venture outside and snap a picture of something other than my balcony–which in reality is several inches deep of metal , only a few steps away from an old-fashioned fire escape.
I mostly hung out with myself, zoomed a little, taught one class, revised an old manuscript, made a few more inches in another. I read The Guardian online at least four times a day; the NYT a little less. I learned to make radio from home, and was relieved to go back to the station, albeit with a mask, and a lot of hand sanitizer. Meeting distantly with friends was a rare joy; my radius became much, much smaller.
Yet I wish you could see the way my Christmas lights shine in a reflection out my window. This year, I relented and ordered a proper set which proved easy to hang. they twinkle like little gold stars in crooked lines. A neighbor has set up a neat gizmo that projects lights onto the trees, so we can pretend a little as the trees glitter with magic.
I don’t know when and how things will ease up as they must. The vaccine will be available for eveyone’s use around the same time Apple releases a new macbook Pro, I think, sometime in the fall. I read about four hundred British tourists sneaking out of their quarantine hotel and instagramming their so-called success, but most definitely selfishness. I find I have less tolerance these days of containment for human foibles. Yet as I type, that news has become already several days old, and I am not as invested in it anymore. Meanwhile, real refugees are turned away or taken to remote islands like lepers. We hardly ever really change, do we?
Yet such a happy surprise when something does change for the better. Small steps, little joys, lighting our way out of caves and dens.
Indira Ganesan, Summer hummingbirds, 2020
Seeing green is so amazing! I’d forgotten what it looked like and it’s still only December. thank you Indira.
Deborah
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Happy, Healthy New Year, Deborah!
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What a wonderful post Indira…May 2021 bring Health, Peace and Justice…
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And the very same to you, Madeleine, with thanks!
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