May Day, mayday!
I woke up this morning and realized today is the only day in which this title makes perfect sense.
We are 43 days into Illinois’ shelter in place mandate. I won’t bore you with a litany of things we can and can’t do--you are already well acquainted with staring mindlessly at your phone, out the window, into the refrigerator. How I long for a long meeting in a conference room with stale bagels or waiting for an hour for breakfast in a cramped vestibule on a Sunday morning.
47 days into the K-12 school shut down that was originally scheduled to end March 30, then was extended to April 8, then again to April 30. And then, of course to June 18--they just bagged the whole year. My children have gone feral and the only muscles they’ve worked in a month and a half are those in their Xbox and texting thumbs.
I have been teaching in place since March 23. My semester comes to an end next week. While that sounds like a bright spot in this bleak spring, I just realized that means my paltry teaching salary will also come to an end and those on-campus summer roles I have come to rely on may not happen.
When I was a child back in the 20th century, we used to make May baskets on May Day and leave them on friends’ and neighbors’ doorsteps. We’d cut egg cartons into 4-cup baskets, stick a pipe cleaner in the middle for a decorative handle, and fill the cups with jelly beans, flowers, and small gifts. The real value of this tradition was to finally rid us of the last of the Easter candy. Of course, no one does this anymore--chances are, someone would call the police on me if I got caught leaving handmade baskets with opened candy on neighborhood children’s doorsteps.
May 1st is a day that lends itself to all kinds of communication—welcoming spring, demonstrating military power, protesting labor abuse, pleading for help. May Day and mayday are homophones—they are spelled differently but sound the same.
And on May Day 2020, they mean the same thing, too. I need help. I am running out of plans; I’m having trouble holding on, staying afloat.
All the effort we put into the first part of the year is supposed to start paying off now, but in the corona, there are few rewards for working through the winter, for making it to spring. Graduation and vacation are off. Organized summer runs, art and music festivals, and day camps are not likely to happen. I just heard that the entire Ravina season—a summer-long series of outdoor concerts where affluent middle-aged white people go to enjoy similarly-aged music artists and get drunk—has been canceled. Canceled!
May needs a project—one of those 30-day challenges that I always want to do but never end up doing. I could do 30 days of running, yoga, planking. I could find the 5lb weights that I am sure are around here somewhere and get summer-ready arms--but for what summer? The only thing I know how to do and for which I have all the pieces at hand is writing.
I’d thought to host a Zoom or Facebook live event and invite all my friends, family, and ardent fans to participate in a “30 days of journaling” commitment, but I chickened out. It’s one thing to know that no one reads my blog, it’s another thing to know-know when no one shows up for my event. So, gentle reader (singular), I am posting the challenge here.
30 Days of Journaling in the Corona
For here there is no
place that does not see you. You must change your life.
—Ranier Maria Rilke
What happened? 2020 was all about balance, focus, vision--seeing what is really there; what we are supposed to see. Oh, wait, that’s exactly what happened….
For years, I have been dreading the puns and tag lines toying (as a cat toys with a mouse) with eyesight and clarity in 20/20. Now, the anxiety I feel is not because of visual puns, but because of what that vision has brought into focus.
May 1st falls this year on a Friday--a date of beginning on a day of reflection. We have 31 days to fulfill a 30-day commitment to keep a journal chronicling what we really see in the time and space of our shelter in place, social distance, and quarantine.
Each day, I will post a random prompt to Facebook. Respond to these prompts publicly or in your own journal, with any modifications, in any form--write, draw, scrapbook your insights on our time together with and away from those we love, free from and trapped by our daily responsibilities, and blessed with and cursed by the lives we live in the corona.
What do you need to see and clarify from this event? How has your life changed?
I hope one or two people follow along and share in this journal activity. As difficult or as easy as this time feels now, if you don’t record your experiences in it, you won’t really remember what it was like.
One thing I’ll remember from living in the corona is that in order to signal distress, you have to call out mayday three times.
This is one.