As I said last time I wrote — I’m learning to meditate.

This is a great time to be doing this, since what I’m learning is to put my attention on something (my breath, while I’m meditating, but it could be anything throughout the day, which is called “being mindful”) and keep my attention on that thing, without being distracted. It’s not easy. I’m learning the hard way.

Today was a good day for learning not to be distracted. Today is a sparkling spring miracle, the air filled with birdsong and the rustling of our neighbor’s Confederate flag.

I decided to meditate on our back deck, to enjoy the sun on my face, so I sat myself down, blue-toothed my phone to Headspace, closed my eyes, and…

Our back yard runs along the sidewalk of a narrow street, so we sit on our deck and watch the people strolling by, walking dogs, and jogging. Without masks.

When we moved here in the 80s our house sat on this was quiet little suburban street, across from a forest. But time moves on, and the trees of the forest have been replaced with apartments, townhouses, and winding parking lots. The street is one mile long, and our house sits exactly in the middle. We know this because we used to run along this street, in that other lifetime before the pandemic, now a dim memory. If you were running today, you’d walk out our back gate, turn right, run the half mile to the northern end where you’d come to a firehouse. Or you could turn left, run half a block to pass the new nursing home they built last summer (they built it on “our” hill — the hill the neighborhood children sledded down every winter, the hill that dared us to run up in good weather, all the steep narrow climb to the top, to stand in the wind, panting, gazing out upon our kingdom — until an enterprising developer leveled our hill and built a nursing home and filled it to maximum occupancy before it was finished;) and if you kept running past that first nursing home you’d then come to a second nursing home down at the southern end of our mile-long street.

Both ends used to be forest. But that was then, and now we live midway between two nursing homes and a fire station.

Today I meditated for 30 minutes, using my new skills to not be distracted, all eight times that a convoy of ambulances and fire engines went screaming from the fire station down to the nursing homes. This might be funny, depending on your mood.

But the air, this time of year! So sweet-smelling! All the new buds, and baby flowers and moist soil. It was so lovely and fragrant outside today that our next-door neighbor came out on her deck, too, to sit beneath her Confederate flag, and fill the fine spring air with clouds of fetid cigarette smoke. This might be funny, too.

So, as I say, I’m learning to not be distracted. I’m learning to be aware of what my mind is doing, what it’s paying attention to. Just to be aware, that’s all. That’s the trick. Not to analyze, or think about what my mind is doing, or feel happy or sad about it. Just to notice what my mind is doing. If I catch myself getting caught up in a thought (like “More fire engines? How many died down there today? It was 22 as of yesterday”) or a feeling (like “Phew! It smells like an ashtray out here!”) and I forget to pay attention to my breath — well, then my job is to simply bring myself back to paying attention to my breath. That’s all there is to it, nothing more than that. No criticizing of myself, no internal commentary, no thinking about meditation, no entertaining clever insights, none of that. Just ignoring whatever distracted me, and going back to my breath. This is what I’m learning to do. The more I practice this, the more I realize how hard it is.

I love the Headspace app. That’s how I started. I love Andy Puddicombe, the sweet, down-to-earth, gentle guy whose idea it was. There’s another app called “Calm” that people like, but I’m not much of a fan (although I like some of their bedtime stories) because I don’t care for the motives and culture of the company, which I can feel in the vibe of the app. I also like “Plum Village,” another app teaching mindful living, featuring Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.

I don’t like this whole “Essential Workers” thing. It makes me angry. So — what — every night at 7pm we’re supposed to stand outside banging pots and pans to say thank you to our “Essential Workers?” And they’re supposed to be grateful for all of that so-called “support?”

Here’s an idea. Since we’re so appreciative, maybe we should let our “Essential Workers” go home? Where they can hide from the virus like we’re doing? Where they can be with their families? How about we go out, instead, to give them some relief? Since we’re so appreciative, how about we stock the grocery stores, drive buses on the night shift, or the gas station, or hang off the back of a garbage truck in the rain, or clean other people’s houses, or work in the meat-packing plants?

Here’s another idea: how about paying “our Essential Workers” more than minimum wage? How about, instead of using a fake, hijacked euphemism, we call them what they really are? Our servants and laborers? The poor underclass? The disposable people we make do our dirty work because we’re privileged enough to avoid doing it ourselves?

How about we stop pretending the economy “shut down?” That fabrication is an offense and an insult to everyone working days and nights to keep the economy running. The economy did not shut down. People are still working. Mostly people of color, not white people. How about saying that out loud? How about telling the truth about why more people of color are infected — and dying — and becoming orphans — than whites?

My emotions are all over the place lately. First I’m furious, then I’m giddy with laughter, then I’m overcome with profound sadness, then I’m furious again. Always the extreme versions of emotions.

The surreal absurdity of everything — every single aspect of every single thing — is funny, so funny, so unspeakably, hilariously funny, so fall-down funny piled on top of even more funny, a mountain, a whole range of mountains, of funny, it’s just… I can’t even wrap my brain around it. And it keeps coming! This crazy implausible moment won’t stop, it just keeps going on and on! Getting worse and worse! Like a dream, but it’s not a dream, I don’t think it’s a dream, I think it’s real, I mean I thought it was, but is it? Everyone else seems to think it’s real, but they’re all in the dream too, so it’s confusing. This might be me having lost my mind and this is what losing your mind feels like…

Most of all I’m sad. When I meditate, when my mind becomes quiet enough for me to see what’s in there, what I notice is that I am unspeakably, wretchedly, profoundly, sad.

I don’t know what to do with the depth of this sadness. I don’t want to look away. People are dying. Children are dying. Healthcare workers are giving their own lives, and the lives of their own family members — they are rushing into the fire — to save other strangers — without equipment! — without masks to protect themselves! — offering themselves as the last human to hold the hand of a dying stranger so he or she doesn’t have to suffocate, on a hard gurney, in a cold corridor, panicked, choking and suffocating to death, alone.

I can’t look away, I shouldn’t, I won’t, not when people are sacrificing so much to help others. I won’t allow myself to pretend that this is not happening. People have no money for food! Children are hungry, scared, orphaned! 75,000 people have died! They’re saying as many as 250,000 may be dead by the end of the year! It would be immoral to look away.

And then… there’s our dance community. What a beautiful life we had! Our dance community is… gone… forever. That life — the one we knew — disappeared, poof! into thin air. Just like that! Like a whisper. Like a soft gust of wind blowing away, silently, in an instant, before you notice it's gone. Floating up into the heavens, into history, into dreams, memories, stories, old videos, photographs ….

Life is transient, fleeting, impermanent.

I can barely conceive of this: That we will never again have those happy, carefree weekends, gathering together in cities around the world, all our friends from all our countries, in all our languages, our many styles and cultures; all of us coming together to laugh and hug and celebrate. And dance.

That life is gone. In the blink of an eye, it’s gone.

The hotels are gone. What hotel chains that are able to survive will be different — everything about them, will be different. Airlines as we knew them are gone. Frequent, easy, inexpensive travel around the world, is gone. Pro teachers travelling from country to country every weekend is gone. The psychological impact of fear of physical contact between dancers, the widespread global unemployment, the lack of leisure money, worldwide economic instability, what will soon be customary worldwide masking, and hand-washing, the overdue recognition that the next global pandemic is right around the corner; these factors among many more mean the end of dance as we knew it.

I’m a realist. My way of finding comfort in the face of uncertainty is by attempting to find what’s real, to find the truth. I crave a view of the whole picture without rosy glasses. It's reassuring to me to know that I'm looking at the monster's face, the worst-case scenario, the full evil; that I see it all.

But being a realist does not mean that I’m a pessimist. I’m not. I am by nature an optimist. I always see hope — I can’t not see hope. My mind, by default, always creates a promising resolution of the story. Not always a happy ending — because we die, and how can death ever be called a happy ending? But always a hopeful ending.

So now, too, I can see that things will come out alright. I can see that we are living through a pivotal, historic, moment that will be recognized as a turning point, a hinge, in human history; a moment in which we find ourselves facing the consequences of many unforced errors; where we are on a steep learning curve and must fight many battles at once as we claw our way upward towards a greater humanity.

And I see the forces of good asserting themselves, as always, and that goodness will prevail, like it always, eventually, does.

We will never again have dancing as we knew it. But we dancers are unstoppable. We’ll find a way.