Corona Diaries

Riley

“I have loved the renewed energy of the birdsong and clear blue skies with no trace of vapour trails, the fox

tracks that have appeared on my lawn, the flurry of bees and butterflies. I have felt both earthed and

floating.”

Background Information

Female, aged 55-64, Academic, Nottingham, White, Co-habiting.

Living and thinking in Lockdown – Video Transcript

During these last two months, changed, perhaps forever, by Covid 19, I have really felt the truth of

Heidegger’s statement: “When the everyday falls away our authentic self is revealed”. For me, the intense

period of lockdown forced an unwilling, at times, refocus but also a sense of possibility for a changed future

amongst the fear, anxiety and day to day grind of an increased workload and impelling sense of uncertainty.

I have been shored up in moments of deep sadness by the prospect of a transformative collective shift, what

Hegel described as “this gradual crumbling....interrupted by the break of day that, like lightning, all at once

reveals the edifice of the new world” (Hegel 1965/1807, p. 380).

Days have come and gone and time seems to have shifted and become elastic. Beyond the busy-ness and

bustle of a new kind of everyday, which has intensified for so many of us in our different circumstances, come

moments of reflection. As John Stuart Mill said, “solitude in the sense of being often alone is essential to any

depth of meditation or of character”. He saw it as being “the cradle of thoughts and aspirations” which benefits

both the individual and society. For me, in periods alone I have found myself dipping back in time, thinking

how I have learnt throughout life, and from whom - more than that, reconnecting with the living and the dead

as if time has torn and has ceased to be the same construct. Remembering people who have moved and

influenced me, reconnecting with their beliefs in alternative kinds of living; remembering previous versions of

my own self, before the world of school and work rushed in – the girl who was a writer and thinker, the putative

poet. My beloved dad, in particular, has been constantly with me, with his sense of fun and creativity, his

curious mind, and, more than anything, his capacity to think critically and to question. I have been grateful

for space for thinking beyond the surface and going deeper in these past weeks.

I’ve thought about space travel and sinking through water, the sense of liminality we are living through, about

how the clock consumes and constrains us, as well as giving shape to our lives – it is almost as if, during

lockdown, we entered the Aboriginal peoples’ “dream-time,” that sense of the past, present, and future

embodied in one moment. So much is compartmentalised and occluded normally by what Mill described as

the “struggle of getting on”, the hectic whirligig of capitalism, “the trampling, crushing, elbowing and treading

on each other’s heels”1. I have taken comfort in the sense of a new, quieter rhythm, after hours at a computer,

1 J.S. Mill, 1970, Principles of Political Economy, Penguin, pp. 111-117

a definite end point of the day, watering the plants and tending the allotment, last thing, and curling up on the

settee afterwards. I have loved the renewed energy of the birdsong and clear blue skies with no trace of

vapour trails, the fox tracks that have appeared on my lawn, the flurry of bees and butterflies. I have felt both

earthed and floating.

But now I see an end to the “new world” briefly glimpsed as lockdown eases and the world creeps back in. I

see inequality writ large, privilege and freedom for those in control and a curtailing of our liberties for many

others. I see discarded gloves and masks, cars snarling up the roads again, and I hear the relentless ticking

of the clock again. I hope with all my heart for real change. Until then, my heart feels sore.

Heartswollen

The waters push backwards,

the undertow drawing me down

beyond light, air and earth.

I fear the wreckage beneath me,

the carnage of broken clocks, spooling,

the soft white bodies of the bloodless,

snagging with their waving arms.

Anchors set adrift and furred in

weeds that entangle and snare.

But better than the surface.

Still down

Silence is shattering

Only the rush of water and the beat

of my waterlogged heart, thrumming in my ears.

Such cold solitude is beyond bliss,

It erases and anaesthetises as my eyes

adjust to the dark like a bottom feeder.

And all above the dance continues

on and on in joyless frenzy

As the days wear out and the seasons scream

And surface is all.