Tag: lockdown

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The Shape of Water

22nd September 2021

An extraordinary thing happened to me.

I was walking along the canal when I saw a duck dive so it was half submerged and half above water – bum up.

And in that split second I KNEW exactly how it felt. Not emotionally but kinaesthetically. I had a total experience of knowing it’s shape, how much it weighed, what it was like to touch and how it’s body felt in and out of the deep. It was one of those unexplainable moments.

Later I realised my lockdown projects of keeping (and so handling) chickens, wild swimming and trying to be in my own body were all ingredients of this withchery.

There is more.

My sister and I have decided to read all my mum’s books. My mum loved reading and always had a book in her hand, or splayed half open on the arm of the chair where she was sitting.

In holding a ‘mum book’ out in front of me I can see my own hands and also slip into another consciousness where I can simultaneously experience her hands and know the feel of them around this same book. Part of what I see is heredity but there is another Knowing of her shape and sense of touch that I can trace on top of, or under, my own. 

Later I realised my experience of caring for my mum in her end of life journey meant I knew the intimacies of her body in a more tactile way than I ever had before. Her skin, her joints, the weight and texture of her landscapes – the physical act of caring bringing a tangibility to our continuing bond.

I wonder about the impact of a year, in which most people had no, or very little touch, on our embodied empathy. The collective context of the pandemic has lent itself to online sharing and temporary communities of individual experience – loss and grief have been real points of connection for me and many.

But I wonder about the physical body, the vessel that holds the heart and spiritual self, it’s potential for us to make connections beyond our busy everyday consciousness. The intimacy of this raw material that knows that you, a book, a bird, a hand, love, are all one in the universe.

The words ‘feeling’ and ‘touching’ have multiple meanings and that makes a new kind of sense as I realise anew that what I experience physically has a relationship with what I experience emotionally – even across space and time.

We all transfer, imagine and recreate touch we have felt.

We can feel the shape of water.

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I’d like to introduce my Partialner

silhouette of woman looking through window at snow

28 December 2020

My relationship is drifting.

I guess lots of them are – I’m sure it’s very common.

It’s got to the stage where we often sleep separately. It makes sense to have separate space. Do our own thing. We’re still sharing a home – it’s a pandemic.

We’re co-operative with food and laundry. We haven’t broken up. But we’re not really together either. It’s a kind of love on ice. There is affection and occasional bursts of the old us, mainly it’s the pipe and slippers us, very little of the passionate or fighting us, quite a lot of what might otherwise be called friendship, and a big lot of numb.

I’m glad of the stability, but it’s very expensive. Having intimate company so close and yet feeling alone is tough. Occasionally the proximity makes the relationship seem just around the corner but we never catch it up and so it’s another little death – of the not good kind. We both want more but we’re kind of settling. A snow covered, quiet, disquiet.

The quiet of being behind glass. Peering through the window, visiting a Christmas past of yourself where everything is cosy and firelit and full of sentiment and happiness whilst the Now you is outside with frostbite.

From the outside everything looks the same. We still spend our couple currency. We still do our public facing job of Together. I don’t know if it would be easier to say and do otherwise but it seems unnecessary disruption just now and what would be the difference? Maybe it would be more honest but who knows what the truth is anyway? We are still having a relationship. We’re both still here in our emotional comfort blanket. A Right picture.

But it’s like everyone else is looking at the picture on the outside of the jigsaw box and inside it’s in bits. Oh, some of the edge pieces are joined up and shapes of coloured clumps hang together – but no-one cares quite enough to put the big light on and do the difficult expanse of sky.

I don’t know who it means I am. Tenacious, weak, trapped, kind, hopeful, stupid. I don’t know why it’s stretching on so long. Whether that’s a good sign or bad. Is it a long winter before the spring or an icicle waiting to drop?

I don’t even know what to call it. An unconscious uncoupling, a friendship without benefits, ships passing in an uptight night. There are so many shades of together and not together right now. Why do we not have more words for snow?

I’m tired. I’d like to Declare.

Ladies and gentleman. I’d like to introduce …my Partialner.

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