I’m itching to have my antibodies tested.
I’ve been imagining I have every symptom. I read on my phone about a post-viral syndrome where one feels fatigued for weeks, sometimes months. My wife read that this is shaping up to be a worse-than-ever allergies season.
Try as I might, I can’t stop myself from looking at my investment portfolio’s daily bad news. It’s an itch. I’m scratching all the time.
The people I’d speak with daily at my job at the library would come in after ordering a book, maybe the latest season of Bates Motel or Orange is the New Black. The library was their day’s social contact, a means to their well-being.
Do online Zoom gatherings provide the same sense of camaraderie and support to those reliant on AA, NA, DA and other meetings? Can you Zoom anonymously?
Regina, one of my buddies from the library, called an hour ago. “This is our time to hold the flame so we can all pull together and allow a new world to be birthed,” she said, describing a 600-person Zoom sessions with fellow Sufis around the globe. “We all need to be flipping switches.”
In her late seventies, Regina has been losing healer friends, old commune buddies. She sets herself on a rant about our need to vibrate at higher levels so we can build something fresh and healthy from the ruins accumulating around us.
“Many years ago I would suffer through the nights from despair and sleepless angst until I recalled what a friend had told me,” she finally added, calming herself. “There are monks who spend all day every day praying for the safety and healing of us all.”
I tell Regina she’s sounding well.
The doorbell rang. I begged off the phone. Opening the door to find a package on the stoop, I saw the masked Postal Service man waving from his open-doored truck as he pulled away.
I run in to scribble a note to myself: The USPS never waved to me before.
There are small miracles every day. Monks’ prayers might just work.
Read more installments of Village Voices by Paul Smart.
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