COVID-19

Working Age Adults

/ Carla M. Burzyk / Leave a comment

This is an odd adjective to be paired with “adult”. I can think of an exception to the rule of it: I was working when I was fourteen, not an adult but a holder of a social security card. What are the parameters for “working age”? Maybe it’s a typo and should read “working “ages” adults, because in many cases it does.

Especially now in these coronary-inducing COVID-19 times. Health care workers (first responders) are tributed with thanks and accolades for the time and expertise they’re supplying in caring for patients during this bizarre time. I can’t fathom the depths of their strength that they reach into every day in order to report to their jobs. Or what they think on their commute: Will I catch it today? Was my husband’s cough last night something I need to watch more closely? Am I going to be a stand-in family member to comfort someone who’ll pass over this day or night?

Each unanswered question carries the weight of anxiety that can’t be easily lifted or carried for too long. But they do bear it and it ages them physically and mentally and emotionally. It makes me worry about them and their families. On a daily basis, they are providing care for the health of tens of thousands. They are an extremely critical component in how this nation proceeds forward amidst this health crisis.

When we’re over it or through it, enough to go back to normal, will their efforts go unrewarded? It was they, not hedge fund managers or NFL Quarterbacks, or Hip Hop artists or cosmetic surgeons who had to keep showing up in increased numbers to care for the sick and the dying. Shouldn’t their compensation reflect the criticality of what they bring to their jobs? 

Sadly, I think it won’t. The general public will go back to spending hundreds of dollars on sports shirts and concert tickets, but would most likely balk at a proposal to double health care workers’ salaries. Yet another lesson in questionable priorities that we as a Nation will collectively not have learned.

 

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Simulated World

/ Carla M. Burzyk / Leave a comment

Why do these words strike a kind of terror in my soul? I guess it’s because of the sort of simulated world I find myself living in in 2020. Because of a global pandemic, we don’t touch other humans anymore. “Virtual Hugs!” is a normalized form of address.

Instead, we interface with computer monitors and we have total strangers “running” for our groceries. This is not the cool kind of “simulated world” all of us 6 year olds in the 60s dreamed of after watching The Jetsons. 

No, this is a simulation borne of disease, depression and deficient and possibly demented politicians. We huddle indoors and watch the world go by. No RoBo maids cook and launder for us. Food is available, but some strangers gets it an delivers it for you and we have to pay a $20 surcharge.

And now, instead of staying with the program until we as a world community are victorious over this virus, the Nut Job in the Oval is declaring a victory which no scientific, demographic or medical data support.

Instead he moves on to focus on “restoring” the economy. Get production up and running again (three words: meat packing plants). Money over lives. Greed and dualistic action over empathy and courageous leadership. Get out there and get back in the swim (15 words: 100 person Church service with one person with COVID exposing all the rest to it)!

I personally felt that he wasn’t the right person for the job in 2016, and God bless him, he hasn’t proven me wrong. I still shake my head. Hard. Hard enough to encourage a concussion.

Do I understand him as saying better to have more lonely painful deaths of citizens than to see a dip in the sacred stock market?  We live in a simulated world that would make Rod Serling’s head spin.

Short Term 

/ Carla M. Burzyk / Leave a comment

I thought I always understood the nature of time: its fluidity, swift passage, slow unfolding. For some reason, I am gifted with a curious or even useful talent or parlour trick. If someone asks me the time (or the temperature), at any time of day or night, I can guesstimate it within 5 to 10 minutes or degrees without consulting a timepiece or looking outside. I can’t explain it. It’s freaky but does come in handy.

When I’m at the beach or upon waking, I’m as reliable as a clock and can position myself in the temporal universe after day dreaming to the sound of waves or finishing a restorative slumber (or restless night). And in the morning, I can dress accordingly, although I will double check the official temperature on one of my i-somethings just to make sure my interaction with the elements regarding dress is comfortable.

The passage of time right now is very difficult for me to maneuver. The COVID-19 virus has (or should have) put the country’s and most of the world’s inhabitants indoors, to avoid direct contact with people outside your family of those with whom you live. With that isolation order came a blank calendar, removal of appointments and rendezvous and travel that formerly provided the syncopation of the day.

When I was working, I’d relish looking at my schedule first thing in the morning and having blank blocks of time with no meetings or conference calls. It was a time to get caught up, or think, or read. I feared retirement would be a long empty block of unclaimed time.

But as I adapted to a new type of employment, (as well as a new locale to call home), my calendar started for fill in with appointments, social events, exercise, meditation, house “work”, TV binging and some premium nap time. I luxuriated in the freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted. And looked forward to my outside interactions.

Now, those are gone: dinner with friends, home entertaining, spontaneous movie dates, grocery and other shopping, haircuts, bodywork, facials, church and classes. I sincerely miss them all.

Yes, there’s contact via the “interwebs”,  but seeing one’s own face on the screen creates a distraction and the interactions have just a pinch of duality that that cheapens the electronic face-to-face interaction. I miss the true face-to-face conversation. The loss of it really disturbs me more than I’d imagined it would.

What underlies it all is anxiety knowing that there’s no estimate of how long it (the new normal) is going to last. My “short-term” is now undefinable except in 24 hour segments. 

My sense of the long term is undefinable. It’s like being in an Escher drawing: going up stairs that lead to more stairs with no passage to a destination point.

When that destination of the virus going away arrives, (how, I can’t fathom) it will be staggered on a sliding scale, depending on one’s comfort level with safety not being in numbers, or one’s critical need to get back to a paying job or one’s addiction to travel. 

I don’t believe my meanderings in time as I knew it pre-COVID-19 will ever be the same: carefree. I believe I’ll always be suspicious of being out of my home and coming in contact with a stubborn remnant of the virus. I’ll hug, or maybe shake hands with reservation, or maybe not.

Human interaction is going to be changed regrettably to one of distance for the long term. For the short-term it’s gone and its return will be shaky and sputtering with halting jerks and hesitation.

It will be colored with caution and longing. And framed by bittersweet comparisons to a time before all of this weirdness, when a hug or a group photo or unbridled laughter or a series of sneezes existed as its own glorious moment in time when the action was unencumbered by fear or distance or second guessing. When “being” in the present and in the presence of others was gloriously taken for granted.

 

Political Crisis Too

/ Carla M. Burzyk / Leave a comment

In this sentence fragment, what would be the next word I’d use to finish it? Political Crisis Too large to comprehend? Too obscene to merit news coverage? Too regrettable to have happened given the easier course that might have been taken? And changing “too” to “two” would be a gross under-calculation by an order of magnitude going back to November 2016.

The then President-elect hadn’t taken the oath of office yet, but had already engaged in activities creating crises that if not illegal, were certainly against the rules and regulations of an orderly transition of government. For an example, only two weeks after the election, the Government Ethics Office which serves as a partner and “parameter setter” during transitions of power, had lost all contact with the President-elect’s Transition Team. The Transition Team and its President-elect was sending envoys all over the globe to do…? This supplanted the then incumbent Administration’s ability to conduct its foreign policy.

The transition between Administrations and the details and regulations governing them are seen as arcane procedures hardly noticed by the general public. It’s the “making sausage” part of accomplishing the government’s service.

Since its inception, the United States government has gone through, as stated by Ronald Reagan in his first inaugural address: “The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution…” The transfers have gone smoothly, with a few occasional pranks, such as when incoming staff of George W. Bush arrived in the West Wing to find all of the “W” keys removed from computer keyboards. 

The 45th President’s transition was unlike any other, with all sorts of agents storming into cabinet-level departments and running policy. Instead of the transition being likened to picking up the needle from a record mid-song and placing it on another song, the current Administration scratched the needle across all of the vinyl and didn’t even select a song. And with each disregard for policy and protocol, the new Administration all but ensured that crisis would be the way of governing.

And now it’s the new normal, this defensive, unapologetic and at times, vengeful public policy management. One might be inclined to ask: “Is this management style partly responsible for the current crisis related to COVID-19”? The responses would be subjective, depending on whether you’re an elephant, donkey, green blade of grass, or liberated free thinker. But the underlying undeniable fact in common is that this is a crisis, with no obvious end in sight.

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Puts Into Focus

/ Carla M. Burzyk / Leave a comment

In times like now, when the world is muddy, unclear and uncertain, the clarity of the heart and mind, those tools used for musing and thinking take a back seat to focussing on day-to-day “normal” tasks and events. Everything is out of kilter. I feel like a tennis ball: back and forth between highs and lows, good news and bad, and laughter and sympathy. The slightest bit of news I hear has me going up or down, depending on the message. I am thirsty for good news and defensive against the bad.

Today, the bad news for me is the increase of COVID-19 cases, the distress of friends and family who are usually upbeat, the closing of Austin, a city I’ve come to love because of its caring for community, and personal physical back  pain. 

Some of these, I can try to alleviate with meditation, conversation or prescription drugs. Others seem too scary to even try to think about. The “good” today is my preparation for and my anticipation of joining together with my group of adults for a theology/philosophical/bible/social justice discussion group; getting a shoe delivery, and donating to Conspirare, a singing chorale that presents beautiful music and is directed by a man who knows the deep need of people in crisis. And the stock market inched up little.

This good news works in concert with the bad. They don’t cancel other out, rather they show a unified picture of the world, warts and all.  I liken it to setting the focus on a pair of binoculars. There are two lenses that have to work together in order to provide a unified picture. However, to achieve that view, one has to focus each lens separately. I like this analogy because it shows that both right and left lenses have to be considered before the whole comes into focus. Holding both sides as one for a clear focus. Maybe this is seeing in a non-dual perspective: the unified whole that’s been broken into several parts. 

It takes effort to hold both and then to use them as one. And it can be subjective: one person’s focus may be another’s blur. Here’s to hard-earned clarity in being present and awake. And putting it all together in focus and in love.