Geographic Hearts

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  • Tag: Covid-19

    • BLOG POST: Plants and Paper Birds

      Posted at 1:37 pm by stellacarr20, on November 17, 2020

      I locked down solo back in April. At the time I felt I had to dampen down my feelings about The World as a way of safely negotiating the global order. The world is still a mess. Even if Aotearoa is less of a mess than most. I thank The Winds for Jacinda and her communications degree words of kindness and clarity during crisis.

      New Zealand is now over a month back at Level 1 of our Covid alert system after the blip up in Auckland. We are doing well in a weird world. Life feels like it is pretty much back to the new normal once again.

      I go to work in the mornings at my university library job. No longer do I have to rhyme my way through contact tracing duties ‘Please swipe and take a wipe.’ This rhyme amused me initially, but it got old fast.

      Meanwhile, Arnold Schwarzenegger photos of terminator hands (think clawed metallic fists) remain pasted to the bathroom walls beside the sinks. These film-still photos serve as a reminder to wash our hands thoroughly every single time. I know it is meant to be funny. And it is.  But it is also really not, because of the fearful intention in which it has been displayed.

      The worst of Covid-19 increasingly feels like it was A Very Long Time Ago here in Aotearoa. Time has acted weirdly in this sense. The weeks of Lockdown flashed me by like a movie on fast forward. I pick out a few discernible points. Pages and pages of typewritten text to represent the many hours spent writing. Most of it for money. These pages represent creative output but also the financial security of still having work to do and the safety of a fortnightly wage.

      I also appreciated the security of seasonal changes. The gentle pull back of the light as the days shortened towards Winter. I also loved the slightly magical way of soft toys appearing overnight in windows and how their stitched smiles lifted the spirit of my inner child. She, who made blanket forts and had rhymes for safety at bedtime.

      During lock-down i choose the comfort of things that could fly. I went about postering my bed sit with pictures of birds and butterflies. Some, I made myself. Others, I collected from op shop calendars and picture books. I decided I liked living in a paper aviary. I consider myself very lucky that the soft calls of real-life Ruru from the Sanctuary across the fence continue to sing-song-sing me to sleep every night.

      ***

      Plants have also played their part in helping me through the pandemic. Not only in getting through it but also supporting how I feel at home not just in a physical place, but also in my (slightly muddied) skin.

      I spent the first day of lockdown digging up my lawn with my landlord’s permission. He even lent me the spade. My first plantings failed to grow – novice gardener here – I hadn’t turned the soil enough and the heavy clay dirt held water in its thick clammy grasp.

      With some advice from my landscape architect mother, I removed the first set of failing plants and spent two hours digging the dirt deeper and turning and turning the soil. I added leaves and coffee grounds as I went to improve the soil structure. Then I dug the soil some more.

      As I turned soil I thought about relationships. Some faded during lockdown. The distance affecting our connections and the technology somehow not quite being able to bridge the gap. Others had been newly developed online or were reaffirmed through video call apps and a more conscious awareness of making an effort towards connection.

      I talked Tiny Houses and container gardens and donut economics and helicopter payments from the government as some sort of attempt at universal income. What had been a more theoretical interest in environmental issues, local food and sustainability, has, with the pandemic, become a much more practical desire to be able to live more on my own terms.

      I was going to write independently, and yes, there is a certainly a large element of self-sufficiency, but it is also about community connection. Learning from others about the things I don’t know. Like soil science, soap making and crochet to name an immediate few. 

      It is also about not so much solitary actions as it is about collective intention. We might all have been in our homes making our bread and planting our gardens but there was also, I think, (and really hope), a wider energy of change towards a different way of being in the world.

      Once turned anew I planted my lawn-turned-garden-bed with bok choi, cavolo nero and rainbow silver beet. I added a layer of mulch to help retain moisture and nutrients. I then watered and fed the plants diluted bokashi fertiliser brew on a weekly basis. I regularly checked for signs of disease. And with my steady care, I was pleased to see my plants grow green and strong as they reached up towards the sun.

      I now harvest garden-grown-greens most nights for my salad dinners. They taste better than anything bought. I take great joy in heading to the garden with a basket to harvest my dinner. Not only is it as fresh as it can possibly be, I also know it is grown not just chemically free, but also with a loving intention of caring for both soil and for soul.

      Gardening has been a new hobby for me since Covid, as it has been for many people concerned with food security in an unstable world. I’ve dabbled before in growing herbs, but gardening is now becoming an activity I increasingly want to do more of. Not only because it makes me feel great on my good days. It is also how, on my Bad Days, when writing doesn’t even help me feel better, going into the garden soothes my spiky spirit.

      The New Normal for me, post-Covid, is about up-skilling and learning how to be more sufficient in providing for my own material needs. It is also about connecting with other people who want to do the same thing. As companions we all face the New Normal together. New does not have to be bad though. It can even, if considered carefully, be an opportunity to make the world better.

      Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged birds, Covid-19, gardening, self-sufficiency, social justice
    • POEM: A Social Distancing Sonnet

      Posted at 11:44 am by stellacarr20, on July 5, 2020

      White lines mark where we stand

      Where we’re meant to wait and

      Masks obscure our careful smiles

      It’s going to be weird for a wee while

      2020 fashion, protective style

      Artist’s lose out and writers are poor

      Financial strife, it’s the new lore

      While the arts keep us sane throughout the lockdown

      They’ve kind of been forgotten now we’re allowed back in town

      Government subsidies have been given out

      It’s not enough, The Opposition shouts

      Health versus economy, the dollars, the cents

      Everyday people, we’re all fucking tense

      The budget is announced, it is heard

      The nation hanging on Grant’s every word

      Unemployment, state housing, a tourism industry boost

      Encouraging people to spend, their dollars are loose

      Heralding the call of the spender

      We’re all waiting to hear back from the lender

      Lives saved of a business lost?

      What will it all amount to?

      How will we measure the True Cost?

      Masks and scarves worn as protection

      Anything we can do to keep away the infection

      Worried eyes gleam dark over the mask

      Shopping has become a dangerous task

      Safety is the question we all ask

      Squirt of sanitiser, we clean our hands

      We’re happy we live in so-called Distant Lands

      Aotearoa is a place far-away

      We’re protected as long as border restrictions stay

      Tourism providers ask, how long til we open, if i may?

      Cafe orders made, social distancing rules

      There’s two metre spaced out bar stools

      Pick up and collect, will this be the new norm?

      It feels like a nice piece of ordinary after the Covid storm.

      I wrote this poem in friendly creative competition with my father towards the end of the month-long Aotearoa New Zealand 2020 Lockdown. I utilised rhyme schemes and cultural reflection to communicate both personal and political views on the Covid 19 situation at the time.

      I hope this poem is both of its time (a snapshot of a person in a historical moment) and that it can also be read as a more universal reflection on a world changing event.

      Posted in Poetry | 0 Comments | Tagged Covid-19, New Zealand, Poetry, politics
    • The Strength of Iron

      Posted at 1:19 pm by stellacarr20, on April 4, 2020

      So, I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes crying about Iron Man (aka Robert Downey Junior) dying in Avengers: Endgame. It wasn’t just the odd tear trickle about a hero sacrificing his life for The Greater Good. Nor was it about watching his wife, Piper (Gwyneth Paltrow with great hair), and his little daughter grieve for him along with rest of The Avengers – their broad-muscled shoulders suited in black. This was a different kind of crying. The scared kind. But also (thankfully) the sort that leaves you feeling way better when it’s over.

      I hadn’t realised how sad and stressed and scared I’d been feeling until I watched Robert Downey Junior die. His death gave me an excuse to cry. And heck did I need an excuse.

      It also came with an instrumental soundtrack to set the mood and pretty actors (Paltrow) weeping but their eye makeup didn’t run. My eye makeup did run. Lines of black tracking down my cheeks. I’ve spent the last five minutes fixing my face.

      IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
       From <https://unsplash.com/s/photos/eye-makeup>

      Covid-19 has changed our world. Life for me, personally, is not too different. Yet. But I am braced for things to get worse before they get better. News from overseas tells us of the lockdown going on for weeks and the emergency panic buying (hello- toilet tissue tussles!) It also tells us about the deaths…

      –

      Ten days ago was my twenty ninth birthday. I started the day with yoga. I sipped tea while reading Emily Dickinson poetry. I went to work where I shared individually wrapped chocolate (hygiene awareness) for mutual celebration.

      I met my father at The Botanic Gardens for lunch. He zombie walked towards me. I karate kicked at his zombie in a gesture of joke protection. This, these jokey, not-touching, ways of greeting each other are our new norm. Apparently, a tourist smiled at our antics. I’m glad I made someone smile that day. It feels like a small win for the world.

      My father and I found a park bench on a crackly-yellow-water-starved piece of grass and watched the city below sparkle in the Indian summer sun. I drank tea from a unicorn patterned thermos. I ate a banana. My father said, unusually seriously, how he wished I didn’t have to live through This Time. Because things were going to get ‘pretty fucking grim.’ I cried inside at these words of care. Mainly because of the love in them. But also because of The Fear.

      IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: Photo by Antônia Felipe on Unsplash 
      From <https://unsplash.com/s/photos/crying>

      I know anxiety.I’m much better than I was, but some days I do feel pretty intensely what I term ‘the-butterfly-belly-beat’ of worry and anxiety and tension and just that feeling that something-really-bad-is-going-to-happen.

      That Really Bad is happening. And I’m surviving it (so far.)

      I am however surviving not thriving at the moment. But that’s the best most of us can do right now, I think. I’m better than I thought I’d be in a crisis especially as this crisis seems like it might last for many weeks… if not months. I refuse to think of it in terms of years.  

      It helps that I have been a philosophical ‘Prepper’ for a while. Don’t worry I’m not a full on ‘stock-for-the-apocalypse-prepper’ with their canned goods and guns and bomb shelters. I’m not quite as hard-core those found in some online corners, especially on fundamentalist Christian homemaking blogs.

      But I do have a good personal library of grow-your-own-veggie gardening books. I know how to bake (badly) and cook (much better than I bake fortunately) and sew and knit and make compost and mend things. I know how to make do with the ‘Not Much’ of both dollars and material possessions.

      And because of this knowledge of ‘Not Much’ I also know about how I (and I think many people) actually do need much less to thrive than they think they do.

      Right now, for me anyway, to get back closer to equilibrium, it’s about rationing news so I’m not constantly barraged by pandemic information. It’s about me spending time outside with my plants. It’s about listening to music as well as news bulletins. It’s about journaling in my sketch-to-scribble notebooks.

      And it’s about me watching movies that make me cry to help release some of the Fears and Scares. I’m not a very good crier normally. I usually release stuff in words and art. But sometimes I think we all need a good cry to feel better.

      Sometimes strength is, I believe, showing a level of weakness. Not the kind of weakness that is bad because it leads to broken things. This is a different kind of weakness. One that is about acknowledging all our emotions and feeling able to express them when we need to in whatever way we are able.

      So, cry and watch Robert Downey Junior die.

      Laugh at cat videos on your newsfeed.

      Listen to songs that make you want to move.

      And I ask you to listen to that call to dance.

      IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: Photo by Blake Cheek on Unsplash
      From <https://unsplash.com/s/photos/dancing>

      Dance into the next day with a compassionate heart for yourself, your whanau and your community. Do what you can to get by now. And help others do the same. Also have faith that there will be better days in The Bad. And that at some point The Better Days will outnumber those we class as Bad. 

      Posted in Personal Essay | 0 Comments | Tagged Covid-19, Grief, Mental Health
    • A Time of Great Sharing

      Posted at 10:50 am by stellacarr20, on March 25, 2020

      (…and yes I’m referencing kids TV show ‘The Land Before Time’ – clearly I was a 90’s kid!)

      NOTE: this post was written prior to the Level 4 self-isolation nationwide lock-down set for Aotearoa New Zealand on Monday 23 March 2020. Lockdwon is due to begin at midnight on Wednesday 25 March 2020.

      Not even a week after my last blog post about reducing and reassessing my social media use Covid-19 became a Global Thing. Suddenly social media seemed like a pretty good way to not only keep up with what was happening in the world but also as a key way to stay in touch with people as we all socially distanced and many self-isolated.

      IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash
       From <https://unsplash.com/s/photos/sharing>

      So, I’ve been lured back. I’m now posting photos of my bushwalks for my friends and family unable to go out anymore. I’m taking pictures of my city-to-sea view. I’m sharing my craft and sewing projects on Instagram to show, I hope, creative ways of passing the time. I’m doing it for the friends and family with health and immune system issues who are now self-isolating. I’m also doing it for people like my grandmother. She is over seventy and now largely housebound.

      I guess there HAS been a re-assessment in my social media use. I feel my posts are less about status, both literally and symbolically. I post a lot less about writing awards and publishing wins (See: status.) I also feel less like I care about what these kinds of posts signify. You know, career success, awards, external signifiers etc.

      I’m here on Facebook for the slow stitching groups whose art works inspire me to slow down and take creative time for myself every few hours. There’s nothing like boro stitch to inspire a few moments of self-care for me.

      IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash
       From <https://unsplash.com/s/photos/sharing>

      I’m here for the community pages where offers of aid to those who need it are growing in posts and comments and shares. These gestures of generosity give me hope for humanity.

      I’m also here to show my slightly blurry photos of trees that I hope make my FB friends experience the same sense of calm I felt when out walking amongst The Green.

      The world is storming right now. Maybe not literally in the climate changed way we thought would be our next challenge. But humanity faces a huge dark storm cloud that is called Covid-19. That is called community transmission fears. That is called self-isolation becoming social-isolation…

      Social media (along with The Trees…) is helping me feel calmer about this shit storm. It feels weird to say this but it is true. It’s the connections to my friends; the video messages and texts and shares that show care that make me feel less alone. Social media is, also, I hope, helping me calm others through what I choose to share too.

      I feel it is this idea of sharing that will get us through to the other side of this Thing. And the language of social media sets us up for The New World Order. We ‘Like’ things. We ‘Share’ posts. There are more love heart emoticons than angry or sad faces.

      IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
       From <https://unsplash.com/s/photos/hearts>

      This gives me hope for the world, as we, at present, largely retreat to virtual worlds.

      I am glad we have emoji kisses and cat icons to send each other when we are lonely. It may not be as a good as a real kiss. Or a real cat. But I know that I, for one, gather the glitchy love hearts and grinning Cheshire cat ready to Share them and hopefully pass on a gesture of goodwill to those who need it.

      Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged Covid-19, Slow stitching, Social Media
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    • Recent Posts

      • BLOG POST: Plants and Paper Birds November 17, 2020
      • POEM: A Social Distancing Sonnet July 5, 2020
      • The Strength of Iron April 4, 2020
      • A Time of Great Sharing March 25, 2020
      • FOMO March 10, 2020
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    • Stella Peg Carruthers- Writer

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