Diary. 20th March, 2020
Never Miss the Opportunity a Good Crisis Affords
The title phrase dropped into my mind as I sipped my morning cuppa and mulled the ideas clearly audible in the river’s flood. It has a fast pace this morning. I can see choppy waves with white caps. The water is brown, presumably the bed churned up from activity upstream. There are branches and twigs in the mill.
Never Miss the Opportunity a Good Crisis Affords
The title phrase dropped into my mind as I sipped my morning cuppa and mulled the ideas clearly audible in the river’s flood. It has a fast pace this morning. I can see choppy waves with white caps. The water is brown, presumably the bed churned up from activity upstream. There are branches and twigs in the mill.
In the context of a global pandemic my small crisis was only the unfortunate experience of finding my
car clamped in a Greystones car park when I wanted to get home after a Dart
journey. I had paid the parking fee but inadvertently one
of the coins inserted into the meter had been one, instead of two, euro. Or so
I assume, as the ticket indicated my payment was a euro short of that needed to
park there for the whole day.
The clamping was less shocking to me than the difficulties incurred in making contact with APCOA Parking, their implacable response - and fee of over a hundred euro immediately demanded before the clamp could be removed. Perhaps it was the absolute unwillingness to engage in any question of justice or the fact they apparently still held out-of-date details of my credit card and the nature of an officialdom augmented by the simple digital alternative options of ‘this’ or ‘that’ that led me to feel so assaulted.
Being able to make use of such an experience, as I have found before, by feeding it into a creative endeavour at least ensures no good crisis is wasted and leaves one feeling less helpless. So this week I followed a link* to renew my learning on haibun – a poem that involves a combination of prose and seventeen syllable haiku - and drew on the experience to have a go.
The clamping was less shocking to me than the difficulties incurred in making contact with APCOA Parking, their implacable response - and fee of over a hundred euro immediately demanded before the clamp could be removed. Perhaps it was the absolute unwillingness to engage in any question of justice or the fact they apparently still held out-of-date details of my credit card and the nature of an officialdom augmented by the simple digital alternative options of ‘this’ or ‘that’ that led me to feel so assaulted.
Being able to make use of such an experience, as I have found before, by feeding it into a creative endeavour at least ensures no good crisis is wasted and leaves one feeling less helpless. So this week I followed a link* to renew my learning on haibun – a poem that involves a combination of prose and seventeen syllable haiku - and drew on the experience to have a go.
It was tempting this morning to stay observing the flood in
my quiet meditation. I managed it at the earlier thought of the stick I picked
up on the path while in Beddinge, southern Sweden, when there for a week at a design workshop some years ago, but the
opportunity afforded by a good crisis thrust me to my feet.
In addition to my
personal small crisis, this is a week of global crisis. The onslaught of the Corona Covine 19 Virus that is now
hitting Ireland, too, has led the government to shut schools and ask those
whose immune system might be compromised, by virtue of age and/or former
illness or ongoing medical condition, to socially isolate themselves and stay
mostly at home. The entire population is also asked to practice distancing
themselves from others by a meter or two. Age and radiotherapy treatment ten
years ago technically put me in the ‘compromised’ frame although I’m in pretty
good shape overall right now. Still, never miss the opportunity…. So it is
easier to write and consider new projects whilst virtually ‘self-isolating’.
The Beddinge stick lying on the side of a pathway through
trees alongside the sea spoke to me strongly at the time and resides now on the
hearth of my home. The idea of talking-sticks – now often used in business
meetings and other gatherings and not confined to sticks, favoured objects may
be instituted instead – came, as I understand it, from First World People,
Native American tribes.
In a group meeting the person holding the stick holds
sway. It would be impolite, to say the least, to interrupt. When they have
spoken, or held the attention of the group in silence, the stick is passed on.
We passed a communal talking stick around the circle at our gatherings of people interested deep
imagery and later in my Dancing the Spiral workshops. Other times it was
put down in the centre of the group for whosoever was inspired, or had
something they wanted to say, to pick up.
The stick is shouting to me, My former experience of facilitating workshops, particularly more recent conversations drawing on poetry as a
stimulating resource, has me wondering about doing something similar on wellbeing
and resilience, or developing a network of support for people in later life. Considering what they’d like to do for what might be the next thirty or
forty years could help counteract the idea that they, and I'm one of them, should simply retreat into
silence. I am in thrall to the stick. Totems are powerful.
I am not a conspiracy theory devotee. I believe the evidence
that events, for the most part, arise and are often used to further various nefarious and also other, good, purposes
so I am not even considering the possibility the virus is anything other than
the effect of careless inattention to the inevitable disasters that face the
planet. Overwhelmed, for the most part, we just do not line up the dots and
face up to the dangers inherent in the possible consequences of our developing knowledge.
When the virus is no longer newsworthy historians may point
to this moment in time as the time when the internet truly took off with the
primed bed of artificial intelligence warmed by the sun of disaster and the
seeds sprouted. It wouldn’t be likely that the digital business world
would miss the opportunity afforded by a crisis either. In fact it is gifted to
them on a plate. But neither need we refuse the possibilities - not least the opportunity to get creative and transform fears and challenges faced into whatever kind of art appeals. Such endeavours may even be the counter catalyst that ensures 'the human factor' remains sufficiently unpredicable that it remains impossible to predict and ensures our behaviour cannot be too extensively controlled.
Related Links - haibun; Surveillance Capitalism; Beddinge retreat 2020.
This website, indirectly brought to my attention by Maeve O'Sullivan, has haibun and haiku details.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff review – we are the pawns | Books | The Guardian
2020 Retreat at Beddinge combining yoga and creativity
http://liznilsson.com/retreats
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff review – we are the pawns | Books | The Guardian
2020 Retreat at Beddinge combining yoga and creativity
http://liznilsson.com/retreats
Related and Relevant previous blogs:
Having the Conversation - About... Poetry related converstions see 2017 post:
https://susanlindsayauthor.blogspot.com/2017/03/join-in-new-conversation-doubt-faith.html
Dancing the Spiral see 2014 post
https://susanlindsayauthor.blogspot.com/2014/11/dancing-spiral.html
Having the Conversation - About... Poetry related converstions see 2017 post:
https://susanlindsayauthor.blogspot.com/2017/03/join-in-new-conversation-doubt-faith.html
Dancing the Spiral see 2014 post
https://susanlindsayauthor.blogspot.com/2014/11/dancing-spiral.html
