Lockdown Diary Number 5

Morning Morning!
Looks like it’s going to be another fabulous day in Cape Town! The birds are already chirping and the sky is turning that kind of bluish …what would you call it… purpleish? colour just before the sun peeks above the horizon.
To be honest, I didn’t think I’d be here this morning. But here I am! I mean what better place to be than behind my laptop, my fingers jumping around the keys looking for the right buttons to fill this space and then I can send them out to you. And anyway, I was awake. You know there’s this little gap in between the time that you’re really fast asleep and that time that you’re awake. Just a teeny little line. And don’t go all technical on me now and tell me it’s REM or not REM or dream state. I know there’s that but I’m talking about that specific point when you know for sure, okay I’m awake now. What I am going to do? Suddenly you’re a little too warm in bed and that foot hanging out the side of the bed- you know, to keep you just that leeeetle bit cooler ‘cos your body’s actually warm but just a tinge too warm so you hang your foot off the bed for a bit of cool. Do you do that? I bet you do that too.
The other thing that struck me sometime between 10.30 last night when I think I fell asleep (how do you know that exact moment? ) and just now, you know that time just before I knew for sure that I was awake, was that thing about the gap between the person next to you and you. (ooooh the light is becoming beeeeautiful now. I wish you could see it here with me and I’m going to glance up at it every now and then if you don’t mind while I write)
Like when you are laying, say, on your stomach (that’s how I sleep if I really know it’s time to close my mind to the world) and the person next to – in my case my hubby- turns and lies with this back to you, like on his side. You know? Not cos he’s turning his back on you necessarily but because that’s how he sleeps best. Then there’s that gap. You know? Because now the duvet is just slightly higher than on your back and it creates like a little channel of air to get through. It drives me nuts that gap! Especially when I’m just about to drift off and I feel a change of temperature now which disturbs my sleep. Then what I do, is just very quietly, surreptitiously you might say, I pull the duvet down just a little bit with my hand that’s lying alongside by body so that it fits tighter around my back?
Do you do that? Those of who you have someone next to? I’m sorry for those of you who are not in lockdown with anyone. That must be lonely sometimes? Or not? I think sometimes not too… (you know what I mean…)
Oh gosh this light is just stunning this morning and I’m finding it harder to sit here and not go outside on my deck just allowing the seeping air into my body on this day. To breathe. I assume that I’m breathing, I mean, clearly, I must be but then sometimes I obviously forget! And then I find I have to take a bigger inhale and an exaggerated exhale. Perhaps that’s why I find yoga tricky because I often forget to breathe! “Don’t forget to b – r- e – a – t- h- e- the instructor will say,” and it feels like she’s always directing her instruction just to me!
I miss that Thursday yoga class. I really do. I need someone telling me what to do with yoga. It’s more relaxing that way and this online stuff gets a bit much, honestly. Zoom meetings are fine but yoga online is not my thing. It was the only regimented type of exercise I did. No more gym for me. Did yeeeears of that in my shiny lycra pants and g-string leotard! Oh my god! Remember those! We used to wear G- string leotards to gym. Well I used to and I’m damn sure you did too. I used to scuttle off at 1.pm – corporate lunch time hours – from my office at Deloittes in Claremont and dash off to Virgin Active (or was it the Health and Racquet? Yes , must have been ) which was somewhere on the top floor of Cavendish. And then shower and return to work at 2pm. My routine.
Geepers, how different are our routines now? I mean like in the time of C?
On that note, – the C- note (I’ll say it, COVID- 19, CORONA) – ooh, the sound of church bells ringing, I love those, how soothing even for a Jewish girl like me – I saw somewhere on the news, that someone had given birth to twins and called them, wait for it, COVID and CORONA!
I mean, truly? How absolutely, bizarre? I mean, would you like to be known as a virus for the rest of your life? A thing that’s causing deaths to thousands of innocent people. I think that must be a definite and certain way for a child to grow up with an insurmountable number of complexes.
And how ironic is this? I’m writing a novel amongst other things ( or supposed to be but it’s not going too well at the moment because it all sounds so trivial, so superficial in the world as we know it and who’s going to want to read an ordinary story about this person meeting that and falling in love and then this one dies of a broken heart or this one travels to India or… I mean, there will be THOUSANDS of people dying after this and what will India even look like?) and in it, the character has twins!! Is this a sign I wonder? Shall I name them Covid and Corona? Crazy.
Now I know for sure that there’s validity in that saying about truth being so much stranger than fiction.
I know my fellow writers are all struggling with this concept and our writing mentor is saying, just keep on, something will become of it,- aren’t you, M, I know you’re out there, haha, you stalker?!- but I just don’t know anymore. And anyway, there’s this whole idea about DISCIPLINE in the time of Covid and that we don’t need to be so hard on ourselves about doing things that are too hard. Then there’s a whole lot of other commitments too…
I find this blogging stuff so much more soothing at the moment.
Okidokes. Time to go. I think. The sun is up, the rubbish collectors are on their way, I need to get my bins out, (oh, that reminds me about domestic duties I want to talk about) and I’ve had enough here.
I also don’t know if I want to do be doing this blogging thing when the best time of day for me to
– b- r -e- a – t- h – e – is exactly the time the writing muse strikes. Just before the sun rises. Weird that. I’ve got a find a way to schedule my posts. ‘Cos we all have to breathe. That I know for sure. It’s about all we know for sure. 
And we never know when anything is really going to strike. Do we?
I really have a lot to tell you though. It’s so hard to contain it all in my head so that’s why I write. The next thing I want to talk about are the lessons I’m learning from The Choice. The book I mentioned yesterday.
Books and breath. The most important things to me at the moment.
Have a soft, restful, day out there all of you.
And remember to breathe.
With love, as always,
Xxx
(PS. I promise not to put pics of a pink sky everyday on my blog, but the sunrise for me is just so magnificent, it’s hard not to share it with you. Just like my words I share.)