Lockdown Musings
What’s your favourite room in your house? Confined to our living spaces during Ireland’s nationwide lockdown, suddenly a question like this became relevant. I wrote this during the three month period of lockdown where I was living and working on a Temple project at Dzogchen Beara Buddhist Meditation Centre in West Cork.
It faces southwards out to sea. There is no ignoring the sea in this room. The glass wall that reaches from floor to ceiling won’t let me. I could wait at the back, near the doorway but still the Atlantic ocean beckons to me. The windows resists my distance, just as the room resists linearity. It circles to meet me wherever I stand.
On one side nestles the shrine to Buddha; a mandala tapestry, a single line of unlit butter lamps. On the other, a shrine to Jesus; a metal cross, a thorn-crowned portrait. The image of Jesus reminds me of the one that hung in my Nanny’s house, the same expression of pain? Disappointment? Pained disappointment? I like that they are both present in the room. Jesus and Buddha face each other, distinct alcoves forming integral parts of the room’s circumference.
There is no other furniture in the room save for a few chairs pushed up against the back wall and a pile of flat, floor cushions. They are a pale, sun-leached orange. I drag one into the middle of the room to do my cat-cow pose and my child’s pose. There is something comforting about sitting on one, they don’t change shape to accommodate your bodyweight. Their density holds you, without commentary.
I like it best in the dark before sunrise and after sunset. Sometimes in the mornings, I see a light flashing out at sea. The tiny, white spotlight of a fishing boat cutting a path through the wind and waves. It means someone else is awake too, someone else is out there in the vastness. I don’t know them. A crew from Castletownbere? Maybe I’ve passed them in the aisles of Supervalu? They don’t know me—a girl from Leitrim wobbling in her tree pose. But seeing that little white light flashing far out to sea, means I am not alone.
In the evenings, the darkness welcomes me back again. It cloaks me as I spin and dash and pirouette. I take off my glasses to let go of the defined and surrender to the blurred. I let go. I punch and leap. I bless myself as I careen past Jesus. I bow my head to Buddha. I spin round and round and round until my breath pulls at my chest. I skid and slip across the polished wooden floor, a barrelling blur of motion. Unfettered, untamed, unseen.
The meditation room is my favourite room here. I like it for precisely what is not in it. Its lack of distractions demands my attention. The only thing in it is what I bring in with me. It sits empty, a container waiting to be filled. I fill it with movement, and every time I do it is like I am charging it up with energy. It becomes an energy capsule. As I move, I jostle the particles floating in the empty space until they are all moving, vibrating against one another. Until the energy that is me, is bouncing off the energy that was floating, waiting for me. Until the energy floods my mind and drowns my thoughts.
When I am in this room, I feel awake. To leave, is to sleepwalk once more.
