This image above are the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis, as seen from one vantage point in space. That crown, that rim of green-blue light is a kind of corona. And that word has, properly, been on our lips. What are we being crowned by now? What mysteries are we being initiated into? I don’t know.
My offering to you today is a short but remarkable piece of writing by a woman of some gravitas and heft – sophie strand.
It asks of the reader to wonder about much of what I wonder about here in this newsletter - ancestors, connection to earth and place, endings, and loving life. If you can, read it out loud. Slowly.
I pray this finds you in good stead and this piece beautifies your next few minutes and the wake of the words stays with you a little while.
Until next time,
Matt
Love In The Time of Corona
We speak of distance now as if it is something to be achieved
When distance is what brought us here:
the distance a mind eclipsed by human concerns
must travel in order to feel less travelled. The distance
between two screens held in two hands telling
the other, I’m sorry for being a ghost.
The worst distance is the distance between us and the earth.
Our sterile homes and shoes separate us from
the very dirt that would welcome us into
an immunity stronger than the human body.
A huge, spongey heart darker and stronger than the span of a
life. And there is distance too, between us and our ancestors.
We no longer pray to their bones. We no longer
grow and eat the same herbs. How did my distant grandmothers
survive the plague? The burning times? The cold? God help me,
grandmother. There is a distance between a woman
and her womb. The man and his empathy.
Yes, I’ll give you space at the grocery store. Space on the street.
I’ll breathe less so that you, my elder, may breathe more.
But come shelter in my heart. Come closer to my tired, shaggy spirit.
Let us share the same skin. The same sin: that we ever thought
we could put distance between ourselves and death.
Whatever comes, the spiked star of corona rising above our
like a star over Bethlehem, foretelling a new inhuman age,
I know I will reach out and caress, with an invisible hand
every being I have ever loved.
