The other night I 'attended' an Alumni event. Connected to some web based communication system, went out in the garden and looked at the sky - with an expert to talk me (us) through the planets and stars. Chris Lintott, Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford and founder of the Zooniverse, hosted the webinar. He does work for the BBC, so no surprise that he was great at the job. It was rather charming to have this respected figure guiding my eyes through the skies.
Not that I could see much between trees and rooftops. A lovely crescent moon, though, and Venus: I was lucky that the clouds held off.
I have written before about the many things to be thankful for, despite the limitations placed on our freedom and the horrible reality of suffering beyond our closed doors. And I was thankful to Chris Linott. And yet...A woman who trains nurses, a former nurse herself and now an academic, told me that the hospitals in my region have coped very well with the crisis, though it has been traumatic for the staff, especially the very young nurses, yet to qualify but offering their services. Another friend told me that her step-father, a paramedic, said he'd never experienced a more devastating time. The care homes, he said, they are emptying.
There is this strange thing in the lockdown. How what comes into your sequestered world has so much impact. A friendly voice and some laughter, an inspiring thought or a fascinating discussion and it feeds you more richly than in usual busy times. A disappointment or discord and you feel yourself unravel, the boat of life more than usually rocky. The shock of reality and a chasm opens. Close it fast. Pick up a book, a trowel, a paring knife.
I had a bad day with some logistical work-related things. A task I could do from home that I thought I'd done well. Turns out, they (the big 'they') didn't like it and another colleague, telling me how he'd completed his mission, had put in more effort at perfection than I had even considered. Out of work and yet I'm still no good at work. The blues descend like a lead balloon and I'm swamped in indigo, without the milky light of the blessed moon. Venus erased and the horizon, oh what horizon, I think, what point?
It's the first time, no, maybe not the first time, the third, perhaps, since the 13th of March that I've felt this low. Before, it was fear and then uncertainty. Now it's the purposelessness of this. Even my work feels like a shroud of angst. Come on, coronavirus, put me out of my misery. Yes, an evil thing to say, but when your soul's black, who cares about another dollop of sin?
I try though. Try to push the clouds away. Recall the moon and the collegiate feeling. The generosity and the enthusiasm. The feeling that it's not all over. It really isn't. The moon is still there. The moon.
And, as I was looking, that night, at the tipped cup of the crescent moon, this wonderful poem by Ted Hughes came to mind. But as I can't share that on this page, I thought I'd share instead one that I wrote some years back. There's a reading too - but no analysis as it doesn't deserve that.
MOON AS EVE
Small planet born of the Big Splash -
pockmarked and lifeless
and yet with power to pull the seas,
slow Earth's rotation and tilt its axis.
Its contoured mask, all silver
and shadows, inspires poets and artists
who paint it - never gibbous
often crescent
mainly full
voluptuous with milky light -
big-buttocked, firm-breasted, ripe -
as Dali's Space Eve, bursting
nipples first
from a swirl of fabric.
She strains, faceless,
inside the supersized moon -
which hangs in a sky
uncertain of its status.
Below, the nicotine stained horizon
heaves into haphazard hills.
Glad you got out to view the sky. Love your poem.