chapter 8 - experience

2313/2020: Are we heading for a total lockdown?

24/3/2020: Regret takes us back in time. The last time I went to kempo was when I got a cold. It was when there was explicit attention to te corona virus, and when we explored how to limit the impact of kempo exercises on our health. Also, the windows were opened, to create a healthy atmosphere. As I said before, health makes me sick. Indeed, I got a cold. Almost two weeks later, it is almost over, but the occasional sneeze and cough seems to be enough to keep me at home.

Time passes, it is all part of this flurry of events, that forces me to take distance, not only social distance, but distance from our common habits and practices as well. And in the light of the measures taken and the predictions for the coming period, it will have a strong impact on our near and perhaps farther future.

25/3/2020: Where am I? Who am I? Good questions, for later!

Question: Do I have enough paper for writing?

Answer: I don't know!

28/3/2020: Why writing? To offload tension or boredom? In fact, the last days we have been busy with arranging the online school sessions for the girls. Noisy and chaotic. Is this effective? At least it gives some distraction. Today we went out, provocational, from my side, with masks. Some people looked at us, with a mixture of amusement and appreciation. Social distance, I told them. And mental distance, I added.

My facebook post, however appropriate, even my wife shared it, did not get so many likes. With a picture of the market, it asked (implicitly) is this how to keep social distance? Well, life goes on, obviously people are in need to communicate.

30/3/2020: You just do your exercises, she said, in an angry voice. We just looked at the possibilities for rearranging the bed, so that there might be some extra space. Then the futon was wet at the underside. Fortunately, it will be warmer soon, so the window can be open. With warm weather it will be impossible to stay inside, implicitly expressing the wish to have a house with a garden.

I am almost looking forward to be on my own, without having to listen to the complaints, go hunt for your suburban dream. But then, I'll do my exercise, and then, what, solitude or plain lonely, in search for adventure, likely, self-destructive. Stay calm, take a break, and do your exercise. Up to 600 per day, as she recorded in her quarantine diary yesterday. Yes, my daily dilemma, stay calm, or what. It is a difficult period. for all of us.

31/3/2020: Fresh flow of air. Mind meeting, zoom in. Info-demic, cold and pain, indistingible, yet there. We survived the crisis, break away, break up, move out, dreams of comfortable living, never true, but anguish, counting out your prosperity. Observe silence. I'd rather like my solitude, with perhaps a glimpse or tiny spark of hope, or adventure. Girl at the door, smiling. Seduction is for everyone. Rational? Adventure, you mean. Including what some call the lower layers of life. Always there, even if sometimes forgotten. Relax now, there might be something later. Part of the X-demic.

1/4/2020: We went out for a walk, to talk, and to walk. Take a break from our voluntary semi-lockdown, to avoid a total breakdown, the dissolution of energy.

Task done, I did some writing. Time for a break. One minor update to life (another web page) and I can go upside-down and improve my posture and possibly endurance, to maintain a habit of steady progression.

2/4/2020: Before smoking, a few words, obligatory writing, even of it is a story of choice, instead of gravitation, where there would not be an alternative to the experience of forces impinging on my life. I do have a choice, I do have a voice. Yes to exercise, no to re-location, even in case of a lock-down.

Finding a pattern of life is not dependent on a house with a garden, that would be another lock-down, known as the suburban nightmare. No for that. Yes to life, the children, freedom of choice, and come what may, a voice!