I just don’t have it in me to go outside. It can be three or four days at a time that I do not leave the apartment, maybe just to throw out some garbage or buy some vegetables around the corner and then right back upstairs, where things are so much simpler. Sometimes it feels like every time I go out, another place opens, typically Russians, with the same tired menu of hummus, pizza and tom yum soup. Maybe a grilled chicken caesar too. It is difficult to see, even knowing that they can easily close in a few months and evaporate as quickly as they sprang up. All the same, I wish I did not know it was happening. This is not the Tbilisi I wanted to live in.
Upstairs, things are contained. I am getting no exercise, and start to think back to when the world got so very small, how the simplicity of quarantine took so much off the table, and what was left could fill the days. No distractions. Empty pages in a fresh notebook waiting to be filled with the next chapter of the book I finally got back to writing. Guitars that stay in tune, waiting to be played at odd hours, quietly giving up a song. I try not to feel guilty, as I go another day without putting shoes on, as I eat leftovers instead of getting something fancy and exotic to wrestle with in the kitchen.
It is a late winter hibernation, a bet against Spring coming early. All too soon, things will be growing left and right, winter coats will be tucked deep into cabinets, the air will smell of lilacs, the wine festivals will begin and then I will indeed pull on some shoes and meet the world. Until then, I just might hide from it all.
It seems we are essentially living the same life.
Oh, how I relate to this feeling. In Alaska I would feel so green-deprived, it was worse than the cold and darkness. To feel new life pushing through the ground was what it took to nudge me from my hibernation, and move the blood in my body again. Down here in south Louisiana I’ve noticed a cellular memory of the hibernation time, and felt at odds with the lack of slow-down in the world around me.
I also recall the relief of the world stopping for Covid, or slowing at least, and wishing for it never to return to such a frenetic pace. I have grief about the fact it has, and put up resistance, staying in the slow lane as much as I can.
Big warm hugs, and may the flowers bloom soon!