James Boorstein – Box3Productions: COVID Entry 26 - The Maine Arts Journal: The UMVA Quarterly

It should go without saying that we are here now.

In Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic Nora Gallagher inked a simple and important question: “What is real now?”

What is real now? is a wonderfully simple and rich question. Not so easy to answer. We tend to see our stories as real; without effort we allow what we see be filtered by how we think, what we expect, or how it once was.

If we could find a way to address that question, honestly and with some regularity, I imagine that much in our lives would be different.

What is real now can be answered by simply stopping, being still, and looking around. That looking needs awake eyes, with the gaze reaching every part of life — physical, social, creative, internal, family, work, spiritual – your likes and dislikes.

The disruption of this is a mirror, providing a chance to see ourselves more clearly, which is easier to do when our patterns, our habits are disordered. Ask again what is real now and then name what you see, face it, or if possible, embrace it. Such opportunities are rare.

James Boorstein, Don’t Walk Sign Grand Street, NYC, photo, 4.16.20, CE 30

The following “Covid Entry” (#26) was written on April 12, 2020 unlike the other Entries, it is more like prayer.

over

and over

again

this strikes me as an opportunity

for me,

for those I know

for those I do not know

not for the planet

the planet likely could not care less, it will survive, it is us who have become attached to our earth’s current form, its current manifestation

A disruption.

Such a disruption does not come often and never easily.

Usually, likely always, they come with hardship.

With loss.

Loss of love, livelihood, health, life, or other treasure. If it does not kill you, you have a chance.

If not to be reborn, then awakened, or re-awakened—possibly a different word for each of us. Clearly I am not thinking about religion, or if so, only as your morning coffee or afternoon walk might be your religion.

A chance to see it all differently, to change the storyline.

The chance is a gift.

A gift offered to us every day in this mess. We always have the chance—each day—but now it is easier, the lights have been turned up on what makes each of us tick.

Never in the civilization of humans has there been a time that such disruption affected as many people as now, if for no other reason that there have never been so many of us.

I pray, as a manner of speaking, as that is something I never learned to do, along with calculus, the alphabet and many other things. But I pray that this opportunity, this darkly-cloaked gift, will yield some positive outcome. Given our culture and our leader, that is far from a certainty; it is a long shot, but more possible now than at any point that anyone alive can remember—that is something.

One can hope.

Image at top: James Boorstein, Mercer St “Paige,” photo, 4.12.20, Covid Entry (CE) 26a

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