Last night I dreamed I was at a bustling marketplace: a place similar to Boston’s Faneuil Hall or Seattle’s Pike Place Market, but not actually either. It was a setting I couldn’t identify in real life, but in dreamtime it was somewhere I’d been to before, albeit not recently.
In my dream, I went to this marketplace to browse: I was just looking. I walked among other shoppers without buying anything: I had no shopping list and no urgent need. I was by myself and free to duck into any store that looked interesting. I was enjoying the simple anonymity of being among other random shoppers: no rush or hurry, just gentle mingling.
At one point, I passed a corridor I’d never had time to explore. It was a passage I had always hurried past or through, as it was a narrow connector between two shops you could more easily reach from outside. In this corridor I found a favorite shop I thought had closed. It carried the kind of jewelry and beautiful tchotkes I adore: paperweights and snowglobes, pottery mugs and wooden puzzles.
Then through the nonlinear logic of dreams, I wandered into a science museum, admiring exhibits with no particular agenda or hurry: a desultory ramble through the land of Look Don’t Touch. Next I found myself in a quiet church in between services, with random strangers lighting candles and praying quietly in pews. I blessed myself from the communal font and gently touched a rosary someone had left beside a stack of church bulletins.
Only on my way home did I remember I was supposed to be in quarantine, the strangers around me all potential vectors of invisible contagion. After more than a month of meticulous isolation, I would have to start my quarantine anew, worrying for fifteen days whether I had been exposed to sickness by the innocent act of walking unmasked among strangers.
Was it worth it, this risk of contagion in exchange for a casual afternoon spent window-shopping like we used to do without worry? The dream ended before I could decide.
Apr 18, 2020 at 8:19 pm
Hang in there! If Buddhism teaches nothing else, it’s that all circumstances are impermanent. This, too, shall pass, and safe “gentle mingling” will be possible once again.
Stay sane! I imagine that J and your animal companions are a great help in that department.
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Apr 19, 2020 at 8:22 am
It’s true that my Zen training is coming in handy these days. Quarantine is like a long Zen retreat, and Heaven knows I had vivid dreams and daydreams about everything I was missing while on retreat.
And yes, there is no quarantine loneliness is a house full of creatures.
I hope you are doing well, staying healthy, and staying sane.
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Apr 19, 2020 at 12:43 pm
Weirdly, I’m finding that my coronavirus life actually isn’t HUGELY different from my pre-virus existence. (Aside from not working, and I’m used to taking a summer vacation anyway, so even that isn’t unprecedented.) I’m still just walking the dog and gardening. The only things I can’t do now (aside from infrequent casual shopping) are go to museums or into town to walk around the urban areas. I miss those activities, sure, but they weren’t things I did all the time anyway. You know?
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Apr 19, 2020 at 1:03 pm
Yes, J and I joke that the basic structure of our lives isn’t that much different: he still works from home, and I am back to teaching online. But going to museums and even restaurants feels like a lifetime ago, back in the days that we casually did those things.
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