This week was far less stressful than last week. I have today and tomorrow off from work due to Passover and Good Friday. My wife had the entire week off, which meant during the day I could devote my energy to teaching remotely, instead trying to balance that with child care. I began to feel like I had managed to get on top of my new teaching regimen.
It's still been a lot of work, and that's been good. Today when I didn't have to work and it was too rainy to do yardwork I just started cycling through the news and Twitter and was overcome with an intense sense of dread and fear. It's not just the deaths from the virus, which is killing hundreds here in Jersey every day. I think about the economic collapse, the people losing jobs, and how this will be used to push another horrific austerity regime. I think too of the election in Wisconisn this week, which is a harbinger for future stolen elections this year. And I notice how little to nothing is being done to stop it, as if the rest of us have just accepted the imposition of a conservative authoritarian state with a veneer of democratic participation.
So I had to mostly get away from the news. I donated money to a local food bank, ate some of the amazing sausage we got from the local Polish butcher, read some PG Wodehouse, helped my daughters with their distance learning, and baked a delicious apple pie with them.
I also tried to put myself into the mindframe of Holy Week. Growing up I was an intensely devout Catholic, and this week going to mass several times and having my soul shaken while following the stations of the cross. Even though I have mostly drifted from the Church, I have still kept this week in my heart. (I also still keep Lenten promises.) That's been hard while homebound, but I found the right means through recordings of a convent of nuns in France, who have allowed their daily chants to be streamed. I am listening to them now, and finding them absolutely sublime and calming. As my wife joked, "you can take the boy out of the church, but you can't take the church out of the boy."
When I first read about medieval history at about the age of 9 or 10 I thought being a monk would be really cool. There actually was a monastery in my town that invited in local Catholics for mass once a month, and we often went. Afterward there would be coffee and donuts with the brothers. They were so much more interesting than the parish priests, often more approachable, and seemed almost freed by their rejection of society. As a very devout child who was ostracized at school the idea of living in a place where no one could bother me while I prayed and read all day long sounded pretty great.
Hearing these chants reminds me of who I once was. I have also started to think of my home under quarantine as a strange kind of cloister, a mirror version of the one I sought in my youth. Spending all of this time with my wife and children, despite the tragic context, has been fantastic. I really don't have to talk to anyone I don't want to talk to. I can be with my family, talk to my friends over Zoom, and still "see" my students without having to interact with garden variety jerkoffs. There's a lot of them out there, especially in this part of the country.
This time in the quarantine cloister has been enormously revealing, I think. Each year I do an inventory of my soul during Holy Week, and this year the worry and anxiety over the state of the world is leavened by an overwhelming feeling of peacefulness. I have come to realize that my daily schedule during the school year, with its long an unpredictable commute along with other things that wear down my psyche, is bad for me, and maybe not sustainable. I come home too often in a bad mood, and too exhausted to spend quality time with my daughters. As for all teachers, summer helps me have that time with my family and calm my soul, with each year it seems like I earn less and less of it back.
I get the feeling that a lot of other people during quarantine have been discovering what matters in life, and what doesn't. Fortunately for the bosses, the labor market will be too restricted for their underlings to jump ship and try something else or demand a humane workplace.
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