It's that time of year. From our deck, we watch as a wall of fog rolls in from the Pacific Ocean, enveloping every structure in it's path and reducing visibility to the point where it's a struggle to render the features of houses across the street.
This is a J.R.R. Tolkien, Sauron's massing armies type of fog. Cycling through it this morning, it occurred to me that it's become an apt metaphor for the current epoch.
Some days I awaken enveloped in a mental fog, unable to see ahead of me, tenuous about taking a step forward.
An entire morning will pass, and I can't for the life of me recall what I did with it. Beyond the lack of productivity, it feels like stasis combined with foreboding.
The only anchor I have is the physical start to my morning: bodyboarding, cycling, situps/pushups or lifting weights. The choice of activity is now dictated to some extent by the level and location of a low-grade chronic aching that migrates from back to feet to shoulders.
Some of the feeling has to do with the uncertainty that hangs over the impending transition of power. How does democracy fare when, as Bill Moyers once said (regarding a different set of circumstances), the delusional is no longer marginal?
Some of it is certainly internalizing the sadness of my kids at feeling socially withdrawn from their friends, attached to screens for hours every weekday. (There is some solace in their having one another as playmates.)
The grey, the opaque, the decaying leaves adorning the road all bring to mind A Leaf Treader by Robert Frost.
I have been treading on leaves all day until I am autumn-tired.
God knows all the color and form of leaves I have trodden on and mired.
Perhaps I have put forth too much strength and been too fierce from fear.
I have safely trodden underfoot the leaves of another year.
All summer long they were overhead, more lifted up than I.
To come to their final place in earth they had to pass me by.
All summer long I thought I heard them threatening under their breath.
And when they came it seemed with a will to carry me with them to death.
They spoke to the fugitive in my heart as if it were leaf to leaf.
They tapped at my eyelids and touched my lips with an invitation to grief.
But it was no reason I had to go because they had to go.
Now up, my knee, to keep on top of another year of snow.
Mourning offset by endurance has dominated my 2020. Some days, the new year can't arrive fast enough.