It’s been FORTY EIGHT days since Cayman lockdown started, and life as we knew it Before Covid (BC) ended.
I can’t bring myself to run. Then I fail in this morning’s circuit session, managing no more than 5 minutes of limp lunges and half-hearted star jumps. While we set up for yoga, a horsefly angrily harasses D, scanning him with beady red compound eyes. I locate the fly spray. I don’t want to re-live the bug bites D sustained on his buttocks the last time he had a run-in with a horsefly, summer 2019 in Ontario lakes. I spray the horse fly. The spray forms a puddle on the tile. The fly’s wings seize and spasm. He launches his body across the surface of the deck. Why won’t he just die ? He wedges his striped abdomen into a thin gutter directly next to the top of my yoga mat. He buzzes dramatically, desperately, inflating my guilt. D digs out fly from gutter, to expunge the noise, then tosses it into the hot tub. The insect floats, still buzzing, still flapping, fighting to swim, to survive. The yoga class begins, and as I inhale deeply, my nostrils constrict, I can’t breathe. The bug spray toxins on the tile cause me to cough and sneeze painfully. I feel as if I am drowning. The fly meanwhile floats motionless on the water’s surface. Bloody karma.
During meditation, the message of the day is “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” I regain consciousness, and feel like I just woke up for a second time today. My hydroponic garden is starting to make the kitchen smell bad, so I tend to an onion that has become soft and rotten on the outside. I peel back the spoiled layers, discarding them one by one, shedding the putrid onion skin until I find the small green interior, perfectly healthy, full of hope and potential for growth that will, fingers crossed, turn out well.
I am at my desk on a WFH project when D pulls up a seat beside me, “What are you doing later?” .
“err, let me check…… um…… nothing?” I answer, excited because no one has asked me this question in 48 days, maybe longer, and its nice just to hear the question. “I’m taking you out for a date tonight” D says. “I’ve found this cool little restaurant where the Chef owner operates it all: Mixology, Oenology, Culinary arts, all in the intimacy of his own kitchen. I’ve made us a reservation. Get dressed up tonight, and I’ll meet you for cocktails on the deck at 7.30pm.”
“Sounds amazing” I reply, “I haven’t dressed up since March. I’ll even wash my hair. Thank. You!” I kiss D. He walks away.
‘Who’s the Chef?” I ask.
CI Gov press report. 1 new case out of 377 negative test results. Total 84 cases. The press briefing today has been cancelled, and all Tuesday and Thursdays moving forward. We now have all this new free time between 2pm and 3.30pm that we didn’t need. I pull up my MasterClass program, i lie supine on couch, blanket on feet, cat on belly, iPhone in hand. It’s not long before my eyelids drop the curtain on the whole show. I wake 70 minutes later, the Masterclass still running. I wonder if there is any way the seventy minutes of information can have entered my consciousness. I have often thought it would be great if we could insert knowledge intravenously. Or enter software applications into our hardware bodies just like they do in the movie The Matrix. Many years ago, in the UK, I had one session with a highly reputed hypnosis expert from London. This lady had been on TV, magazines, even BBC Radio 4, and she claimed to be able to alter broken dialogues in people’s heads, adjust mindsets to abandon their destructive patterns, to claim new positive territory. I was very stressed when our session started, which with hindsight, I imagine was common for many of her clients; you’d have to be extraordinarily desperate to consider signing up for her fee. Toward the end of the session, she had me recline on a couch and close my eyes. I was instructed to listen to her voice and follow her on a journey. I cannot say where the journey was to, because after 5 minutes I was fast asleep. I slept a lot in those days, stress can do that to you apparently. When I awoke about 40 minutes later, she was sitting patiently – at the end of the couch. “I’m so sorry I fell asleep” I blurt, now feeling even more desperate, because the session was over and I missed most of it. “Don’t worry” she said, “You can absorb all sorts of information into your consciousness whilst you sleep.” To this day I don’t know if I received 40 minutes of savvy hypnosis, or 40-winks of nothing.
This evening arrives, and I am giddy as a little girl. After we have walked the dog, I disappear into the bathroom to pluck, apply mud, scrub, depilate, dye and powder. There is a lot to be done to undo Mother natures’s plan. “Easy on the makeup!” calls D from the kitchen.
“No makeup? Got it!” I reply.
“I didn’t say that” says D.
At 7.30pm we meet for drinks, followed by an amazing dinner. D in a suit and me in a cocktail dress. D has rearranged our living space to look like a cosy boutique restaurant in East Village NYC. The kitchen has a host of things hubbling and bubbling, and smells magical. We sit at our table for two in oversized armchairs. The amuse bouche is named after the owner’s cat, who is named after a cocktail. The farm harvested vegan tasting menu is simply… well, simple. And special. And honest, and tasty, and authentic, and a lot of other qualities lacking in many restaurants. “I would like to visit here again” I say.
“It took me a long time to get us this reservation” says D, “48 days, actually.”
