Writing

Chat with a Cat

Thanks for sticking with me through all this, you’ve been really patient and I appreciate it.

The cat is unresponsive

I think the worst part about this situation is the uncertainty, you know? When will this end? How will things change? I’ve never coped well with the unknown, it’s anxiety inducing.

Growing up, I always had to stick to a routine. Legit. I’m talking - a draw full of undies with the days of the week sewn in - level shit. We had a weekly menu. Monday night chicken schnitzels, Tuesday night pizza, Wednesday night bangers and mash etc. I never got bored with the predictable. I took comfort in it. Now, nothing is predictable and I’m more uneasy than ever. Perhaps you’ve noticed?

The cat is unresponsive

Yeah. That’s why I’ve been watching so many reruns of ‘Ab Fab’ and ‘Will and Grace’. Sitcoms from the 90s really seem to calm me down. I like knowing the punch-lines to every joke, not having to laugh because some other people are doing it for me. The canned laughter is comforting because it makes me feel like I might actually be in a room with other people. Like in a theatre and not just on my couch.

The cat glares at her.

Yes, I’m aware I couldn’t bring a lap cat in the theatre with me. Now that you mention it, the idea is slightly unsettling. Perhaps we’ve become a little too codependent. Does it bother you?

The cat is unresponsive

Of course it does. You like your privacy, don’t you?All you ever want to do is sleep all day, undisturbed. Well, sor-ry for disturbing you, your Highness, but how do you expect me to resist petting you when you’re just so cute all curled up and purring?

Yes, I know it’s an invasion of your personal space but I feed you so…

She pats the cat

Let’s be honest, aside from me being home all the time, your life hasn’t really changed all that much. In fact, I’m sure you’re blissfully ignorant to the chaos that the world is in.

The cat grooms itself.

I had to convince my grandma that it was too risky to go back to aqua-aerobics. I pictured the pool teeming with viruses and almost had a panic attack. She was scared enough to stay home, so that’s a relief.

The cat stretches

You’re right. Stretching is a good idea. I did an online yoga class but you kept getting in the way, remember? Yes you did! You kept crawling under me when I was in a high plank so I couldn’t do my chaturangas. Oh and the amount of times you’ve stepped on the keyboard during my Zoom calls! You can really be a little shit, you know that?

The cat glares resentfully

I didn’t mean that, honestly. I have nobody else to direct my anger at, that’s all. You know what that’s like. Remember when you scratched me the other day?

The cat is unresponsive

Oh, you remember! It was the day I was wearing that dress with the fringe…

The cat yawns

So what if I felt like getting drunk and dressed up on a Tuesday morning? It’s not like I do it every day, and besides staying home is saving lives, alright?

Dancing and lip-syncing alone in this apartment is one of the few pleasures I have left at the moment. I can dance like nobody’s watching. Except sometimes you are watching. Then you claw at the fringe of my dress and tear the stitching.

The cat gets up and scratches the couch

Hey! SSSSS! What did I say about the scratching? You never listen to me!

The cat scampers off

I’m sorry! Come back. I love you.

By Tenielle

All so obvious

I saw on Insta

That she was holed up at Crown

I’ll call her Jewel

Pretty obvious!

Pictures of her food

Cheese and crackers

She told them she’s a vegan

Obviously!

I asked my friend

‘How will she fill her days

read, write, exercise, tv?’

‘Masturbate….obviously!’

My feed is flooded with photos

Artists holding onto past glories

Now unfunded, out of work, scared

It’s all so obvious.

My friend and I scheme of ways

To break the system, escape, meet up

But it’s only a game

Obviously.

Back at Crown

Jewel watches a boat

Stuck out in the bay

And thinks of refugees

It’s all so obvious.

Rebecca

@pineapple_princess62

10 Things to keep you entertained during quarantine

Create a bucket list
Choose a book to read
Try a new recipe
Video chat with friends and family
Create a playlist
Deep clean your home (watch Marie Kondo)
Watch a movie
Try Yoga
Write a poem
STAY POSITIVE AND STAY HOME

Jana

@janaandreou

Dear Meanderful

Hi. How are you doing? No, I mean, how are you really doing?
⠀
Before responding on autopilot “I’m good/fine/ok/alright”, check in with your body, ask “what am I feeling?”, and notice where and how the responses show up in your body. They might not be clear and definite responses and that’s ok; if you’re not used to doing this, stay with the practice for a while, notice your breathing, check in again and notice what comes up.
⠀
It can and often will be a bundle of emotions of different textures, some of them seemingly random and fleeting, while others seem like concurrent programs running at the same time, draining your battery. What have you noticed? What is trying to be heard? Which part of you is saying that? What does it want or need? Listen deeply and with curiosity, withhold judgment and hold the space for it to express what might seem trivial, irrational, ridiculous or unacceptable to you; and tend to it, as you would do for a child in distress.
⠀
I’ve been keeping a journal to track my emotions. I’ve noticed patterns and cycles each week, such as fear and anxiety in the background, making me fatigued and not fully functioning. I’ve also avoided feeling certain emotions until they get loud and insist on being heard and attended to. Curiosity about what I’m feeling, allows myself to feel into those emotions and explore the old, worn stories I have around them. They then pass like bad gas or part like clouds in the sky, clearing the way for me to ask what I’d like to choose from here.

Allowing and tending to my emotions helps me stay “emotionally sober”, choose my response to what is going on around me, and be present for others around me in these uncertain times.
⠀
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” - Viktor Frankl

by @becoming_mienderful

‘I can’t believe people actually drink before noon’

I use to think that.

Now I think I own enough liquor to be classified as an essential business.

Is it wrong to drink this much?

Maybe I’ve changed, I’m different now.

Or maybe I’m wrong.

Just different?

Wrong

Different

Wrong

Different

Wrong

Different

I’m standing in front of the fridge.

My mouth could catch flies, that’s how big it dropped when I opened the door.

Mum's made custard.

Fuck yes.

Mum's started insisting that we call her ‘my lady’ and at first it was kind of funny and trivial but then she requested we say it in Turkish. Bayan

(we are not Turkish)

I wonder where she learnt it from. Where, how but most importantly why?

I open up Duolingo on my phone.

¿HOLA ready for your next Spanish lesson?

Lo siento I whisper back, not today.

I sink into the couch thinking about things I should do.

I think and I think and I think and I think

I think all the way till 7pm

I eat another custard.

I think.

I go to my bed, press play on whatever pops up first.

I think some more.

I think and I think and I think and I’m asleep.

by @izabellayena

I've always found it hard to live in the moment. I tend to be afraid of not knowing what's going to happen. But the fact that, these days, nobody else knows either is in fact very relieving because it makes me feel less alone. So recently a thought came to my mind:

There is no certainty because certainty is only built on probability. And probability is always 50 - 50: Yes or No.

Not having to speculate about the probability of something takes away a lot of pressure. We shouldn't think about percentages. Life is much easier that statistics. Anything can happen. Nothing has to happen.

Natascha

@NataschaViktoria

Beginnings and new beginnings
A new beginning, with precious time available. Time for thought, to ponder and wonder at the story
of life. A fragment of memory propels me, so many years later, to truly recognize the story of my
father, and inadvertently, my beginning.
Suddenly yet gently I see my father with new vision. I see his resilience, his courage, his profound
yet pragmatic faith in God and the loving protection he provided us, his family, by choosing to keep
to himself the tragic events that formed his life.
Equally suddenly my father’s mother enters my thoughts. A grandmother I never knew, who died in
England when my father was four years old, the middle child between two sisters. In my head is a
vague image of her face, captured within a tiny locket long mislaid. Her dark eyes – my father’s eyes
but even darker – and a searching intensity there. And she died. And my father and his sisters were
to leave the life they knew and begin a hazardous journey by sailing ship to distant Australia.
New beginnings? Yet how many beginnings had those young children already survived? The loss of
their mother, the horrors of WWI . . . the Spanish ‘flu, a pandemic killing some 50 million people in a
much smaller world than we know today . . . and then this new beginning to face and yet survive the
impact of the Great Depression – quickly followed by the disastrous World War II. All this in another
land without an established future, culminating in the collapse of their remaining family structure
and my father’s permanent hearing loss.
And so it was. Yet, if that tragic sequence of events had not occurred, I would not exist. Or would I –
in some other form? And I wonder about the human spirit? Is our spirit set free to become
somehow immersed in a physical body due to a whole series of coincidences over time, space and
destiny? How many coincidences are occurring right now as our current community faces the COVID
crisis? What would my philosophical father have made of all this? He would have said be strong,
keep going, have faith, pray, there is a plan, there are things we cannot know . . .
In the mirror yesterday I caught a flash of something in my own eyes and I wondered again about my
grandmother and her searching gaze. In that moment I remained very still, deeply moved, my hand
at my heart suppressing a sob for all I hadn’t truly understood.

It’s supremely quiet now as I write. The virus has brought people home. No traffic sounds no sense
of the thrum of 21stC life, but a stillness. Not sinister, not eerie and quite different from my familiar
meditative stillness. This is a new beginning. It’s good. It is fortunate to have time to ponder. For
what is our own destiny? Is that why eyes search, wondering, in trust or hope or faith – or fear?

Pauline

@paulinemckinnonmeditation

29-03-20

Hanging laundry near a cracked-open window - spring isn’t here yet, not truly, and it’s been wet and cold - and for a moment, I think someone’s left a radio on outside.

I push open the pane, and realize it isn’t music, it’s birds - a chorus of them, their singing as delicate as lace - in the middle of a grey Monday, in the empty street.

Regan Daley

@welliesandatutu

I see some friends hug and kiss

As if it was yester-month

And then I watch as they drink from the same cup

Stop, stop I scream

We’re in Covid-19

But then I think

No, no, it’s only on the screen

It is from yester-month

When we could still hug and kiss

I long for the day

When we can do the same

Before we forget

And it’s all too late

Lucy

@lucylouca

Niki's Pizza Dough

I’m trying to stay positive and was thinking that this self isolation is a good thing...we all complain we don’t have enough time to clean out that cupboard, or sort out our utensils draw, or try a new recipe or in fact cook at all, mend some clothes, or just sit and relax. Well I didn’t do any of that today....I binged watching Netflix and at about 3 pm decided I should get up and do something. We were low on bread so I made some bread (recipe below) and had some wine whilst doing a puzzle with my daughter. Then I had a nana nap, had bread and butter for dinner with another glass of wine...I can do this again.

The recipe is actually my pizza dough recipe and I’ve just made 2 small loaves out of it.

Recipe: Best pizza dough (Makes 4 pizzas)

Ingredients:

6 cups strong bread flour (900gms)

2 cups warm water (500ml)

6 tbls olive oil (55 ml)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp yeast (4 gms)

6 tsp sugar (24 gms)

Method:

Mix everything together in a mixer, minus salt. Blend for 2-3 mins then add salt. Continue mixing for a further 7-8 minutes. Once done put in an oiled bowl, and cover with clean tea towel and allow to rise in a warm area 1 ½ - 2 hours.

Niki

@mygreekkitchen

Diary Entry 25.3.20

Each night, before I go to bed, I wash my hands. Of course, in this strange new landscape, I wash them many times a day, but perhaps at night I am more contemplative, more open to letting my imagination run free.

As I scrub I cannot help but imagine that I am a surgeon- no- a world renowned surgeon- one about to perform a delicate and experimental procedure.

In my narrative, the love of my life lies ill in a hospital bed, victim of a virus that strikes quickly and indiscriminately. I am the heroine (of course), who at the 11th hour, swoops in to save my love and at the same time save the world.

It is a familiar story, But this time, as I scrub every millimetre of my skin clean, I realise that right now, we are all the heroes of our personal stories. We are all making sacrifices for those we love, and collectively we will save the world.

Sam

@cordy_sam

From my window

Every morning he arrives

For elevenses

Ladders on the roof

Pops the bonnet

Stands to smoke

Leaves

Joanne

@joanne.mp.davis

Solitaire (excerpt from a song)

There was something aching about it all,

The lines were drawn, forcing them inside, away-

From the green, the uncharted and unseen

Written by @em_george

I laughed when you said there

Was a global outbreak

Because I did not count myself as

Global but then I saw

How worried you looked and realized

That this was not about me

- stay inside by @izabellayena

A list of things that are inconvenient to discover in a global pandemic;

You have a severe lactose intolerance
The money you were saving for a ‘rainy day’ had in fact already been spent on online shopping during a day when it was raining
You did not outgrow your asthma from when you were a child
Twenty seconds is a short time to spend high fiving your friends but a lifetime when you need to wash your hands
Jacinda Ardern is not our Prime Minister .... @izabellayena

I remember a different time of deserted streets, suspicious looks and the breath of fear. No masks or gloves though because the threat was audible back then. It was the roaring thunder in the sky, as low flying war planes unloaded their exploding cargo somewhere far away. Those in the front lines were not so lucky – they saw and heard everything; this, at least is the same. Front liners always get the raw deal.

I remember the firing red and black summer sunsets; the hauntingly beautiful effect of the haze and smoke of fires and bombs and grief.

In contrast, seemingly unaware of the panic and fear befallen to those who stand below it, the sun now continues on its merry journey around the seasons of the year; breathtaking sunsets, just because … enough to make its subjects marvel in awe for a while and forget the worry and the what ifs.

The wheel is turning, and some us are heading into winter and others into summer. But all of us together and apart. A different kind of war. And one hopes a different kind of peace and a more connected world; because peace will come. Peace always follows war.

by Lucy

@lucylouca