Day 11: Snow Melts, Viruses Mutate

The idea came to me from within, but then I saw this headline in The New York Times, and that gelled it. “Storm Expected to Bring Snow to the Northeast on Monday.”

Of course it is. It’s March, ducklings. We who live in the Northeast know that on any given day it can snow, rain, sleet, hail, or beam sunshine with added lilac crocuses for good measure.

My hanging Mary Engelbreit calendar for this particular March, that is, March 2020, bears two words: “Brace Yourself!” The lovely Mary has drawn two people flying a kite. We are bracing ourselves for something different from kite-flying these days.

I woke up this morning thinking about what other experiences we might have that are like the one we are currently undergoing with the quarantine over coronavirus. What came to me instantly was Snow Days.

And isn’t it ridiculous that I am doing exactly what I quoted my Sufi teacher Mark Silver saying all humans do in yesterday’s essay: attempting to figure out what I already know that’s like this? When I know in my bones that nothing like this has ever been the case in my lifetime. Bear with me for a bit please.

We who live where there is snow on a planet ravaged by climate change are quite accustomed to snow days. Snow days are declared when there’s too much snow for our municipalities to manage. Snow days, ergo, mean that school is cancelled, workers are told to stay home, and the screaming scrape of huge metal snowplows on dinosaur-sized diesel trucks become a counterpoint soundtrack to watching too much bad television.

I know parents who love love love snow days. They get out of their work drag and back into comfies, usually pajamas, and the whole family eats things that they don’t normally and watches videos till they can’t remember the plotlines.

Snow days are a caesura, a pause, on the quotidian routines of life. Everyday life, as we know it, stops, and a magical, temporary respite kicks in. Most of the people I know who experience snow days love them. They’re a treat.

Except.

There’s always an end in sight to snow days.

Because. Snow. Melts.

Yep, the weather changes, the sun comes out—here’s an idea, I think it’s because we are all wishing for it; collective weather management, if you will—and the snow, bless it, melts.

Viruses, beloved, don’t melt. They mutate if we don’t treat them very respectfully.

Do I have to cite the plague that attacked my queer brothers and sisters not that long ago? I hope not. In fact, I really hope not. That virus, medical cocktails notwithstanding, mutates to this day.

There is a basic principle in metaphysics that all things here on earth reflect one another. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it far more eloquently,  that there is an “inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

In other words, to take it to the bottom line, “I am connected to you. You are connected to me. We are all connected to one another, and everything is connected to everything else.” Have I left anyone, anything, any place, any when out? I hope not.

A long-time Seeds reader made a point of sending me a poem yesterday by a woman named Kristin Flyntz. She, too, is focused on our connections, our samenesses, our vulnerabilities, those things we all, like it or not, share. It’s long, but I feel strongly that everyone needs to hear it. If you can, even if it’s just you and your pets, read it aloud, Beloved.

An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans
by Kristin Flyntz

Stop. Just stop.
It is no longer a request. It is a mandate.
We will help you.
We will bring the supersonic, high speed merry-go-round to a halt
We will stop
the planes
the trains
the schools
the malls
the meetings
the frenetic, furied rush of illusions and “obligations” that keep you from hearing our
single and shared beating heart,
the way we breathe together, in unison.
Our obligation is to each other,
As it has always been, even if, even though, you have forgotten.
We will interrupt this broadcast, the endless cacophonous broadcast of divisions and distractions,
to bring you this long-breaking news:
We are not well.
None of us; all of us are suffering.
Last year, the firestorms that scorched the lungs of the earth
did not give you pause.
Nor the typhoons in Africa, China, Japan.
Nor the fevered climates in Japan and India.
You have not been listening.
It is hard to listen when you are so busy all the time, hustling to uphold the comforts and conveniences that scaffold your lives.
But the foundation is giving way,
buckling under the weight of your needs and desires.
We will help you.
We will bring the firestorms to your body
We will bring the fever to your body
We will bring the burning, searing, and flooding to your lungs
that you might hear:
We are not well.
Despite what you might think or feel, we are not the enemy.
We are Messenger. We are Ally. We are a balancing force.
We are asking you:
To stop, to be still, to listen;
To move beyond your individual concerns and consider the concerns of all;
To be with your ignorance, to find your humility, to relinquish your thinking minds and travel deep into the mind of the heart;
To look up into the sky, streaked with fewer planes, and see it, to notice its condition: clear, smoky, smoggy, rainy? How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy?
To look at a tree, and see it, to notice its condition: how does its health contribute to the health of the sky, to the air you need to be healthy?
To visit a river, and see it, to notice its condition: clear, clean, murky, polluted? How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy? How does its health contribute to the health of the tree, who contributes to the health of the sky, so that you may also be healthy?
Many are afraid now.
Do not demonize your fear, and also, do not let it rule you. Instead, let it speak to you—in your stillness,
listen for its wisdom.
What might it be telling you about what is at work, at issue, at risk, beyond the threats of personal inconvenience and illness?
As the health of a tree, a river, the sky tells you about quality of your own health, what might the quality of your health tell you about the health of the rivers, the trees, the sky, and all of us who share this planet with you?
Stop.
Notice if you are resisting.
Notice what you are resisting.
Ask why.
Stop. Just stop.
Be still.
Listen.
Ask us what we might teach you about illness and healing, about what might be required so that all may be well.
We will help you, if you listen.

In this morning’s Times, I read this headline, “Traffic & Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down.” And I was relieved. Because the correspondences that Ms. Flyntz has so evocatively penned are real.

Here’s another headline: “Eerie Streetscapes as New York City is Stripped of Commerce.” We haven’t begun to understand the long-term economic effects of the Trump Pandemic, but we do know that money isn’t a good enough reason to risk the devastation of the populace.

Ms. Flyntz writes, “Stop. Just stop.”

It’s hard, Beloved, I know it is. We are so used to being in motion all the time. But we must stop and heed this warning. We haven’t heeded the warnings of emissions, we haven’t heeded the warnings of the fires, the typhoons, the earthquakes. We haven’t heeded our own fears, named or not, of annihilation.

Did you know that Daniel Radcliffe doesn’t do social media? I didn’t. Bravo. The BBC announced—wrongly—that he was the first celebrity who’d come down with the virus. Actually, I think that was Tom Hanks, but never mind.

In “Daniel Radcliffe Does Not Have the Coronavirus,” the gifted Mr. Radcliffe cites his ongoing recovery from reliance on alcohol. The Times writes, “He stopped drinking in 2013, and said the mind-set that keeps him from alcohol is helping him navigate the coronavirus anxiety today. ‘To really know and understand what it means to take something one day at a time is an attitude that really helps across life,” he said. ‘When you first stop drinking, you have to be convinced that you can ever have fun again.’”

I’m not sure fun is at the top of anyone’s agenda right now. We’ve been taken down to first chakra issues, those of survival. Not the survival of the fittest, but the survival of all of us.

Here’s a suggestion. I cite another front page New York Times headline from a couple days ago that made my heart sink. “Search for Coronavirus Vaccine Becomes a Global Competition.”

Oh, ow. Just ow. Just ... really?

Won’t this be a phenomenal world when The New York Times headline reads: “Search for Coronavirus Vaccine Becomes a Global Cooperation”?

Myself? I’d consider that a perpetual snow day.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

© Dr. Susan Corso 2020 All rights reserved.