Wasteland

 December 15, 2020

 

I’ve been trying to find the shape, the image, the form of my 2020. Wasteland is what comes to mind. But for a while I haven’t been able to describe it further. I’ve had years that felt like wastelands before too – a nuclear wasteland, a war torn wasteland, an environmental disaster, or even simply an arid desert. None of these describe this year. All of them have more character, dynamism and potential than this year has been. 

 

So today, I began drawing the wasteland— a semi-urban area, small badly maintained buildings, litter strewn around, no people, rocky ground with a very thin layer of top soil. I drew a frame around it and within a stick figure going in circles, figures of eight, straight lines, zig-zags. Sometimes ambling, sometimes running — but confined within it, unable to leave the picture. 

 

Yes, this is the image of this year for me. And yes, I haven’t been able to leave the frame or grow anything, or put down roots of any kind because of the hard ground. It has been barren and devoid of hopes, of life. 

 

The picture reminded me of my Saturday morning walk to our terrace dojo at the Waterloo Centre. I get off at the SMU bus-stop, I cross the pristine lawn where a smattering of early risers are doing Tai-chi or stretching and doing light exercises, sometimes a little girl is holding her parents hands and taking gleeful steps, someone is jogging, or people are just sitting around chatting. I cross Bras Basah street and the walk on Waterloo street is different. Not many people, small lost-seeming buildings, messy sidewalks, and the centre itself needing maintenance (which I think it is getting). Our space, with stained dusty tiles, at first makes me sigh and say, ‘anywhere but here.’ Then we start training and around me/us I feel a bubble of strong, happy joy that lifts me above the wasteland.

 

In the wasteland of this year karate has been the only bubble of clean sanity, of hope and renewal. Strangely covid has not taken karate away, but instead made online trainings with senior Sensei’s available. Trainings that rejuvenate, inspire and make happy the dull, everyday-ness of this year. Something to look back on with pleasure. 

 

Thinking further I see the external and internal factors that kept me within the frame. I see that I need more than a bubble that bursts, once I finish training, and drops me back into that frame, to keep going. I need to find ways to expand the frame, to leave it, and perhaps to grow something even on rocky ground. 

 

The year hasn’t been an hibernation. A hibernation for me implies a time of rest and integration with new life after. This year has been devoid of that feeling. It has been a meaningless wandering through the same landscape, fighting fires repeatedly. It has been these constant fires also that have prevented still contemplation and growth. I’ve got into the habit of waking, and first fighting fires, making sure they are out for the moment, before trying to do the work my body and soul call. But the fires exhaust me and all I want to do after is rest. Maybe the wiser strategy would be to let the fires burn and do the work first.