Delayed, Displaced, Reaction.

September 25, 2024

The rain has scuttled my plans for the day. I was supposed to be out doing errands, going from one location to another, but it’s a bit icky to walk around in wet streets with rain dropping down from above. The insides of buildings feel colder, especially if I get wet in the rain. Much nicer working at my desk while it patters outside, and the green trees look lush and happy. 

I am home this week. I returned Saturday and though settling in took a while I felt lighter that one of the two back-to-back stays away from home were done. But Sunday night my peace was shattered.

After we returned home from Sunday dinner with our cat and human family, I lazed a bit on the sofa, watching some sketching videos. My current sketchbook is boring and I wanted ideas to do different and more striking things. Instead, I found a video encouraging me to draw ugly birds and embrace the ‘ugliness’ of my art, because without doing the ugly stuff we couldn’t create the beauty. It was fun but neither the video-makers nor my birds looked ugly to me and I suppose that exactly was her point. 

I switched to another video, and I heard a huge thud from the study. ‘What fell?’ I said, wondering what Deepak was doing in the study at that time at night, almost midnight. 

‘That wooden box on the bookshelf, with the headphones in it. I wanted to update them,’ he said, and went back and sat on the bed after re-arranging the box. 

I had forgotten what other things were in the box and I continued watching another video, but suddenly asked, ‘What else was in the box?’ 

‘Erm those ninja keychains, and some pens.’

I jumped up. I remembered the pens. After nine months living here I still don’t immediately remember what it where. They were my least expensive pens, ones I had removed from the trays in my desk drawer as my collection grew, but which nevertheless included some of my favourites. Had any bounced out, did any crack, had they opened up, were the nibs damaged. I went into panic mode, and I felt an anger that was disproportionate to what had happened, and then I went numb. 

I wrote a message to my fountain pen group asking for advice. Almost immediately people started posting suggestions. One person also added walk away from the horror for now and deal with it after the panic has subsided. I liked that and after checking the nine pen’s outer bodies for cracks, I got into my pj’s, slipped into bed, and picked up a book to read.

But it was as if something more precious, not necessarily materially precious, but something like trust, or a belief system had crashed, and not a box with the least expensive of my pens, and I couldn’t sleep, and when I woke my body felt shaken as if it had undergone a huge trauma. 

I love my pens, from the cheapest to the most expensive, but I don’t believe that I would be in the kind of shock I felt if one or a few were broken. I’d be sad, I’d wonder if I could fix them, or if I should replace them and how fast. I might feel like the best thing to do was to let go.

But there were layers here. Why did Deepak not mention that my pens had fallen, but instead, just go back to the bedroom? He said he had panicked and felt paralyzed, which makes sense as I also have done the same. I also could have been the one who dropped that box and maybe I just need to find a safer place for my pens. 

A flood of memories of other things broken, of people not owning up, of people just running away without saying anything, and maybe even denying it later when confronted. The sense of life’s forward flow being obstacle-ed and stuck in eddies that swirl and circle, that reverse the flow and change everything, overwhelmed me. Even though what had happened was not that big a deal. 

I couldn’t touch the pens until Tuesday morning. Monday, I continued as if the box and pens didn’t exist, made plans for the short few days here in this home before I went away again. I got on with life. I haven’t understood the enormity of my reaction, my overwhelm and anger, yet. I don’t know what delayed shock I was responding to in this possibly echoed experience to one from my past. But unidentifiable fears, the worst kind, overtook me. 

Delayed response. I often get into that mode. It’s as if the body-and-mind need a less heightened state to process whatever is happening. Does that sound familiar?

Meanwhile the escalation of the war situation in the middle east terrifies me and yet I go on with life trying to not think too much about it. Even if it bothers me what can I possibly do about it and the sense of hopelessness and powerlessness is too much. All I can do maybe is include it in a meditation, but I suddenly stop in whatever I am doing, I just pause, my hand in mid-air, my thought flow arrested and wonder what people on both sides — the Lebanese, the Palestinians, and the Israelis — are feeling. Are they wondering when it might stop? Are they in the place where they had to numb out a bit or a lot? How do they cope emotionally. The ordinary people I mean, not the ones perpetuating the violence.

I wonder if we, all of us in this world, are numb and what our delayed, displaced, reaction might be.