GHOSTS

Ghosts

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I drove in to work early early Monday morning knowing that I only had a brief window of time to get one last batch of slides running on one of our automated microscopes. The weather has been gray, cold and drizzly for days, but on this morning a thick fog had settled into the area. I paused to pull into the cemetery that I pass on the way to work because fog and cemeteries are photographic opportunities that I gravitate too. I only took a few minutes, a mad dash really, but I flipped back and forth between camera apps, playing around with long exposures. It wasn’t until later that I went back to look at and edit the photos and discovered that I had photographed ghosts. I keep seeing these pictures of places that I have visited before, places that are always swarming with people. I think about the times I have visited Talaura and how the thought of having to cross through Times Square would make us both groan. I remember elbowing my way through Pike’s Market with Chris and being overwhelmed by flashes of color and throngs of people. The pictures I have seen recently show a completely different scene. Stark and empty. Silent. And I itch to be there to photograph it myself. There is something so inviting about the emptiness.

Melancholy beauty.

Tuesday was my first full day to stay home. The city is shut down until sometime in April. I knew this day was coming for me, that I would join the many others who have been sent home to ‘work’. I had been dreading it because I am such a creature of habit. I cling to my routine and my way of life and my space. Now, a lot of that has to change and I am expected to be productive through it all. It is a struggle and day one was bumpy. I am working on creating a new routine. I’m was up at 5:30 for yoga and meditation. I showered and dressed for work. I fed the dog and made some coffee. I spent the morning extracting images and reviewing an image processing tutorial. The afternoon Zoom meeting to watch a video series on electron microscopy didn’t have enough viewers for us to commit to watching it today. So I filled that time with more processing tutorials. In the teatime Zoom meeting, we were all assigned various journal articles to present in scheduled journal club meetings. I have plans to start an intro course in coding in Python. This seems ambitious since I barely passed my basic programming in C class in college. I wedged in a twenty minute cardio workout and once the rain stopped, I dragged us all outside for a walk.

Today’s mantra: Be patient with those around me and be kind to myself.

That mantra should really say ‘be patient with myself and be kind to myself’. I need more than a day to settle into this. I was never the kid that eased herself into the pool. I was the kid to jump right in. I am learning to ease myself into this situation. What is funny is that I long to be in those empty places, yet I struggle to be in my very own empty place. There are too many ghosts flying around, too many voices. They bounce off the walls and whisper the things I don’t say out loud. They are fueled by my insecurities and they make me prickly. I don’t like being prickly.

Tomorrow, I’ll add ‘light some candles and sage the house’ into my new routine.