PANDEMIC DIARY

HEALING DEFINES US

October 27, 2020

Healing defines us. I awoke this morning and, as I am want to do, examined my operative knee. My surgical knee. My ‘bionic’ knee’. The ‘invaded’ knee now implanted with military grade artillery metal and nearly eternally lasting synthetic polymers — the former for strength and endurance; the latter for durability and comfort - glides easily, feels no pain, no cricks, and no encumbrances. After three months of active recovery, I am beginning to feel like myself…none other.

Healing takes time. It is a restorative process. However, the therapeutics takes place under cover of bulging blobs of black and blue bruising. The swelling is massive and ran up into my groin area and down to my foot. All definition was lost. All attributes and contours of my physical structure were hidden by contusion, a ‘fluid’ filled mass.

Now, here’s the thing. As I began to heal, the discoloration faded and resolved. The swollen hills reduced into dunes of definition. I could begin to see the outline of what was my knee. The abscess no longer hid completely what laid beneath. Like a sand sculpture, as more was removed the deeper the detail one could see. I thought, “exposure is revelation”. Take away the injury and you are left with insight. Remove the harm and authenticity is revealed.

Isn’t that exactly what is occurring during these difficult times? We are being attacked by concealment at its most destructive and venal form. I got to thinking about our lives in the age of Trump; Covid; Barr; McConnell; Meadows; Stone; etc. and how we have become ‘swollen’ with fear and anger; inflated with rage; and, bulging with a desire to repudiate. We are not ourselves. Or, we are our injured selves. And, just as a foreign object has been inserted into my body, so have individuals of a distinctly different moral and ethical bent been inserted (or invited???) into our societal psyche. We are inflamed by this presence of alien forms. We want to reject the entering fault and eject actively infecting systems so we may return to a semblance of normal functioning. It would be bad enough were it merely the pandemic of viral contagion. Add to that the raging illness of self-interest; racism; classism; caste; and, corruption and we may soon discover that it is too late to heal the body politic.

We have been the unwitting subjects of ethical surgery.

When Adele was pregnant and enduring her 16 hours of labor, she agonized in a room with a hanging statuary of Christ on a Cross. Despite the fact that she is Jewish, she asked for and garnered all the help she could get in a screaming plea to all who would listen. I feel like that now, willing…desperate…to ask the mythical gods for their help and guidance. To heal what divides us. To rid ourselves of what we created in our midst.

We shall bear witness Judgement Day, (of sorts), November 3. May the gods be with us. And, VOTE!

Love to you all.