Back on the road in the age of Covid

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(Note: this is a post I started last Thursday before Pinkerton’s accident, but I think it’s still an interesting discussion to have as I wrap up this blog.)

Today’s question is courtesy of Lilly; she asks what I think travel may look like when restrictions are lifted, and what I think about hopping back on a plane.

My least favorite thing in the world

I’m guessing that travel will be challenging for many, many months. From a practical perspective, with temperature checks and socially distanced lines, the airport experience is going to become more protracted and unpleasant. Flying itself will look different – no middle seats, and, on flights that are not long-haul, no cabin service. And I can’t imagine what protocol will be put in place for bathrooms on board – sanitizing between each use? – I think the airlines have a lot to figure out.

Airlines themselves have cut flights by over 70%, and we don’t know when (and if) they will return to anything close to their flight schedules pre-pandemic. This means not only fewer flights but fewer direct flights, which will force passengers to route through hubs, resulting in exposure to even more people. It also means longer trips and more inconvenience for passengers.

In one sense, I’m not looking forward to the experience of traveling again – it was uncomfortable and exhausting to begin with and I feel like it’s going to be worse, at least for the foreseeable future. And there is the very real fear of exposure to Covid, particularly within such a confined space (although, to be honest, with their HEPA filtration systems planes may have cleaner and less contaminated than most buildings.)

In another sense, I’m looking forward to travel. Part of it is practical; I need to travel to get to work, and I can’t wait for both work and travel to return to my life again. Part of it is because I miss my friends around the country (and the world) who I usually get to see regularly as my work takes me to the cities in which they live.

And part of it is the nature of travel itself. I love being somewhere else, somewhere new, the anxiety and excitement of the unknown, the sense of possibility and the sheer novelty. I’ve loved having time at home during this lockdown, but part of me thrives on the stress of constant movement, negotiating new spaces, encountering a city and its people for the first time. It sparks my brain, gets my neurons firing in a way that nothing else does.

I don’t know when I’ll be hopping on a plane again. But I do know it will be an adventure.

Chronic pain, chronic stress

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Earlier on this blog I pondered the difference between acute and chronic stress as part of a discussion of the “fight or flight” instinct. As humans we are set up to respond beautifully to acute stress – the cortisol surge, the heightening of senses. But chronic stress besets us with a litany of both physical and psychological woes – the pandemic and ensuing lockdown and disruption to life are a prime example.

(I couldn’t resist another Pinkerton shot. I’m serious when I say he comes to work with me…)

Like chronic stress, chronic pain wears both the body and the psyche. Sylvain asked in the comments section of my last post for a discussion of injuries among musicians; there are many. If you think of the position a flute player or violinist takes, with one arm twisted over the torso, another arm holding the weight of an instrument, you can begin to imagine the kind of small stress that is constantly asked of the body.

Bass players need to hunch over their instruments to draw the bow over their strings; pianists need to create downward force on the keyboard with the arms in a pronated position. As musicians we’re put in unnatural positions, and the motions are repetitive and incessant.

Most musicians I know are always nursing some sort of pain; tendonitis is a constant affliction, neck pain, elbow inflammation. It’s essentially like being an athlete, it’s just that we use smaller muscles and finer motor movement.

As a conductor my shoulders get tired; I’m try to do a lot of exercises for my upper body – yoga, weight lifting – to keep those muscles strong. And as my work requires that I stand for hours on a podium, I have to be very mindful of how I’m balancing my body and if I’m favoring one leg over another.

Most working musicians I know are always dealing with some sort of pain, and one becomes accustomed to it. There’s the delicate balance of knowing what you can bear and what might become something more serious, of course. There is also the sense that life is not always comfortable, but that it’s possible to find a way to make it work nonetheless.

It’s a kind of practical resilience that stands us in good stead in times of difficulties, and it’s a quality that I’ve witnessed in my colleagues as this pandemic continues. Many of us, especially freelancers/independent contractors have found all of our work dissipate like so much mist, no income in sight, maybe for a year. Yet I see my colleagues finding ways to stay creative, to engage, to adapt and to be open to a future vastly different from our not-so-distant past.

As I reflect back on these 2 1/2 months since the world changed, I’ve been thinking about the incessant stress on our lives, and the need to mitigate it as the world lurches forward into uncertainty. I’m going to continue that thought tomorrow – I’m back on nurse duty with Pink, the best stress reliever I know!

Road to recovery

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Pinkerton stood by himself for a few seconds today and it was glorious.

On a pee pad on a dog bed on a towel. Safety first!

He’s been spending a majority of his time hanging out in his bed. The scar is pretty impressive, running nearly half the length of his spine. He hasn’t really complained – he sits up when he has to go out, and he still leaks a bit, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

He’s always been imperturbable. The only things that he reacts to are the doorbell, UPS trucks, the printer and the air fryer timer (all things that ding, beep or whir), and then it’s simply a few staccato barks of warning. He’s always wandering away somewhere, alone, to explore a corner of a park by himself, before trotting back.

My magical little creature is a little frail right now, but he’s on the road to recovery. And I’m grateful that despite everything that’s happened to him, he still looks out the window with curiosity, bright-eyed and calm, ready for his next solo park adventure.

Thank you for the messages, the well wishes, and the love. I’ll be returning to more general topics these last few days of the blog, although I’m sure Pink will appear as I attempt to wrap up this experience.

Are there any topics in particular that you think I should cover?

Role reversal

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Pinkerton is my travel buddy and has been all over North America, and has even come to Europe with me. His presence is calming, and when I’m in the midst of a busy season of travel and work, knowing that I’m accountable to his needs and comforts is grounding for me.

The epitome of chill

He hangs patiently backstage as I work, lies quietly in his carrier when we go to the gym, greets all of my colleagues like old friends, nudges next to me on the bed after a long day. He’s my four-legged support system. He keeps me balanced.

Pink just got home from the hospital with a dozen staples in his back, his back legs immobile, his front paws shaved where the IV lines went in, his beautiful fluffy tail tangled and hanging. Now it’s my turn to be patient with him, to lie quietly next to him on the floor, to change his pads and clean him, to hand feed him his favorite food, chicken.

Pink has been central to my own mental health, and now it’s up to me to be central to his recovery. It’s a role reversal that I relish, and I’m grateful to be able to give him even a fraction of what he’s given me.

Thank you, everyone, for your continued care. When the world turned upside down, having the constancy of Pinkerton was one thing I counted on to keep a sense of stability. I’m just relieved to have him next to me again.

Waiting game

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We’re still waiting for our little butterfly to feel better and my heart aches.

But my heart is also full from the kindness we’ve received. Some truly amazing friends set up a GoFundMe page for Pinkerton and I’ve been in tears all night from the good will and love that surrounds us.

Oh that face…

It’s been up and down today, starting with a hopeful report in the morning that Pinkerton was tracking well after surgery yesterday, but this evening we learned he was in a lot of pain and had to up his pain meds. We probably won’t be seeing him until Monday, and it’s so hard to hear that he’s in pain. I hope you bear with me while I focus on him for a few more days before I return to my regular blogging.

Life has been humbling. And the unwavering support of friends near and far has been humbling. If the pandemic hadn’t made me reexamine my life and priorities, this will.

A day of waiting

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Hi friends, and thank you for the outpouring of love and care. Pinkerton is a lucky little guy to have so many people sending him so much positive energy.

He’s a little glassy-eyed from the fentanyl but was awake and alert this morning. He’s a trooper.

His hind legs were paralyzed yesterday after the impact and he was in shock, as were we. The hardest part is not being able to be with him due to social distancing requirements. An MRI today showed a herniated disc and he’s in surgery right now so we’re waiting yet a gain and hoping for a good outcome, and that our little butterfly will be back with us soon.

I’m not quite ready to write about this, although I think I’ll be able to put some thoughts together tomorrow, and I hope you understand. Suffice it to say that life is humbling in the unexpected turns it takes, and many times we’re surprised or shocked to face what’s around that corner. Trying to stay grounded and reminding myself to breathe. Thank you again for the care you’ve all shown, it really sustains me.

And the word is…

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Wayne asked me if I could choose a word for 2020, what word would define me.

This is kind of what 2020 has felt like so far

I guess I’m not ready to speak for all of 2020 (I’m hoping that it will continue to change and develop!), and the word I’m choosing is not so much one that defines me than one that captures my frame of mind.

Reset.

Almost like a hard reboot, or a cache clearing. A forced stop, a clean start.

I, like so many of us, have been traipsing along on whatever life narrative I constructed for myself, moving through the incessant activity of travel and work, all in aim for a future over which I thought I had dominion. And the illusion of the world as we knew it, or the future as I imagined it, crumbled in the space of a few days, a week.

I’m choosing to take this reset as an opportunity to stop expecting things to turn out a certain way. Control is an illusion, of course, and releasing those expectations can be remarkably freeing. I’m choosing to take this reset as an opportunity to reexamine the choices I’ve been making in my life. Walking down a well-trod path takes the least resistance, of course, but it doesn’t mean it leads you where you want to go.

I know I’m asking you to ask me questions, but I can’t resist asking what your word might be?

My task: we broke quarantine today to invite my brother and his family into our bubble; we were asked to babysit my nephew while my brother got some shopping done. I wanted to be really present and engaged for the few hours I spent with Dylan, who I haven’t been close to for nearly 10 weeks (done!)

Friends then and now

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Thanks for the comments and questions, you’ve allayed my fears of challenging questions or no questions! I’m going to try to get to all of them in the next days, but I encourage more suggestions and thoughts; this feels like the best way to bring everything full circle as I finish this writing experiment.

Both A. and Paul, in slightly different ways, brought up the idea of friendship, how it may have changed during this pandemic, and what it will look like when life returns to a modicum of normal; as I’ve just spent a half hour in a text flurry, it seemed especially apropos.

I really, really miss doing this with my friends…

In balance, I feel like forced isolation has strengthened my ties to the people I’m closest to. Being unable to socialize in person somehow levels the playing field in the sense that it doesn’t matter if a friend lives across town or across the country; we can only see each other through FaceTime/Zoom etc. so distance lost its meaning. The result has been a more regular connection with those far-away friends that I rarely see as well as my in-town friends, a definite upside.

I’ve been fortunate that all of my family and a vast majority of my friends have trusted the advice of epidemiologist, health authorities and other scientists, and have exercised caution and protected the health of others. A few, however, are convinced that lockdown is an overreaction and that reviving the economy supersedes the possibility of unnecessary illness and death and that this is all a constructed crisis.

Luckily, none of these are close friends; I wouldn’t know what to do in that situation. As for the more peripheral friends who advocate the conspiracy point of view…I’m fine with having them float more to the periphery. These days I feel I have little tolerance for anger or accusation, and I would rather walk quietly away.

For myself, especially in the early days of quarantine, the sense of isolation, the fear of possible illness and the general sense of the frailty of our lives made me acutely feel the necessity of my support system, of the deep connections I’ve created with so many throughout my life, and the love I felt for them. As a result, I’ve become more transparent with everyone, more wiling to be completely honest with my feelings, especially of my vulnerability. And without fail I’ve had candid and truly authentic exchanges in return.

How have my relationships changed during the pandemic? For the most part, they’ve deepened and strengthened, and have reminded me of what’s most important in life.

My task: committing this reflection on friendship to (virtual) paper has strengthened my resolve to remember this feeling of connection and to actively continue to sustain it. I’m going to make some Marco Polo video messages right now. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, Marco Polo is a messaging app that lets you record videos that function just like texts – you can respond immediately or you can watch and respond later. My friends and I have ended up sending each other long messages every week, and I’ve reconnected with a lot of people this way. HIGHLY recommend!

As a reminder, please keep posing your own questions in the comment section, it’s so mind-opening for me to read about the things that you’re thinking about!

14 days

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I started this blog 9 weeks ago. I kind of hate saying that, because I started on the first day of lockdown in SF, and 9 weeks seems an unimaginably long time for life to have been put on hold. Yet here we are.

Wait, where are we??

And now I find myself with 14 more posts until the purported end of the lockdown…although it remains to be seen if it’s extended, and frankly I’m not holding my breath! But I do know that I’ll stop the daily blogging, and that’s both a relief and an unknown, as daily writing has been as much of my lockdown experience as has endless hand washing and boarded up storefronts.

Since the beginning, I’ve ended my posts by posing questions, and I did so not so much because I wanted a response, but more to give you, the reader, a jumping-off point for you own thoughts, and to show you what question I may have posed to myself when beginning to write.

So now, for these last two weeks, I want to turn the tables, and leave the questioning to you, so that your queries will serve as the basis of my posts So, friends, tell me, what kinds of thoughts have you been pondering, and what kind of questions have you been asking yourselves?

My task today: to not worry that 1) people will ask me really challenging questions or 2) no-one will ask questions! No, but seriously, I have a hard-wired fear of rejection and failure, and I’ve learned that the best way to combat that is to do things that make me uncomfortable…like leaving blog topics up to someone else. But, well, here goes (done!)