Notes from my "Spanish Cuarentena": Day 52
Today I looked back on a blog post I wrote when we initially decided to move to Spain titled, A Year in Spain.
Like a premonition, these were the things on my “Spain to-do list”:
Practice the difficult art of not being in a rush
Make more time for nothing
Apprentice to presence and come into a more subtle and vibrant experience of embodiment
Experience moments of connection previously unknown to me
I’ve been “working” on this list since we arrived in July, 2018 but this quarantine took those intentions to the next level, showing me just how little I actually need and that in fact, less continues to be more.
We still plan to return to Salt Lake City in August but our last few months in Spain were supposed to be full of travel and visitors and a lot of activity. And while there is some disappointment around not being able to experience more of Spain and connect with friends and family on foreign soil, it has been a wonderful opportunity to take simplicity and presence to the next level. This uncertainty, which of course comes with fear and discomfort, also comes with a sense of freedom. There’s so little time and brain space taken up by future planning. Whether that’s organizing the next weekend or week long adventure or planning my 2020-2021 calendar, everything is “on hold” and so my attention is right where I am. That doesn’t mean I’m not creating. I’m actually working a lot. But what I’m working on is coming out of what’s being called for in the moment - what I’m drawn towards right now. It’s not about a future course that someone might be interested in a year from now. And yes, I recognize that that will happen again, that life moves in phases, but for now, I’m relishing this presence - this opportunity to attend to what’s right here, right now.
I have a new understanding of how little my happiness actually depends on;
a sliver of light on my face before the sun slides behind my balcony window, a stunning view of the Jucar river gorge and it’s brilliant cliffs supporting the old city, a banana-blueberry pancake made for me by my 13 year old daughter on “Spanish mother’s day”, curling up in a fuzzy blanket reading “Little Women” to my 10 year old daughter, meditation with my husband followed by a perfect café con leche, practicing “zoom yoga” with dear, dear friends, a virtual meditation circle where ripples clearly undulate, the sound of chamber music and the Spanish national anthem booming from the speaker of a 16th century tower across the way at noon each day and the sound of clapping, hooting, and hollering in support of our front-liners at 8pm every night, beautiful, healthy food, made at home, and after 45 days, receiving permission to take daily hikes and feeling the soil beneath my feet 7 days in a row. This is what has been nourishing me.
And so, while I’ve spent the last year-and-a-half simplifying, pairing down, exploring what I can let go of in order to find more peace and expansion, these 52 days in quarantine have given me a new experience of what’s essential. The basic guideline in Spain has been - only do what is essential. Only essential businesses remain open, only essential workers leave home to work and only essential outings are allowed (trips to the grocery store, hospital or pharmacy). And that level of essentialism has been a wonderful window into presence and deeper connection, reminding me over and over that less is almost always more.
And of course, as I write, I have this underlying discomfort in my belly that maybe it’s wrong to write about what feels good and silver linings and connection with so much suffering in the world. As of today, Spain, a country of just under 47 million, has logged 25,428 deaths. Around the world, people are out of work and hungry and sick and scared. All of this is true. AND that’s not the whole truth. I want to tell the whole truth and I invite you to do the same. To turn toward both the suffering AND the silver linings. To both grieve and celebrate what’s lost at the same time that we grief and celebrate what's to come and to look for moments when we neither grieve nor celebrate the past or future and instead, experience the fullness of the present moment.
And so, as our quarantine enters a new phase in preparation for the “new normal”, I want to embody what I’ve learned, nourish a sense of hope and wonder for the future we might create together and hold close to my heart, a compassionate prayer to alleviate the suffering of all beings.
This David Whyte poem is helping me do that...
With so much love,
Rachel
CLEAVE
To hold together and to split apart
at one and the same time,
like the shock of being born,
breathing in this world
while lamenting for the one we’ve left.
No one needs to tell us
we are already on our onward way,
no one has to remind us
of our everyday and intimate
embrace
with disappearance.
We were born saying goodbye
to what we love,
we were born
in a beautiful reluctance
to be here,
not quite ready
to breathe in this new world.
We are here and we are not,
we are present while still not
wanting to admit we have arrived.
Not quite arrived in our minds
yet always arriving in the body,
always growing older
while trying to grow younger,
always in the act
of catching up,
of saying hello
or saying goodbye
finding strangely,
in each new and imagined future
the still-lived memory
of our previous,
precious life.
…
CLEAVE
THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD
Poetry by David Whyte
APRIL 2018 © David Whyte and Many Rivers Press