Dean at Home: The Pandemic Blog

Anger (A continuation of meditations on the 7 Deadly Sins) For the most part, I've tried to avoid dwelling on things like anger, particularly in this moment. There is already so much to be angry about and "anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering," as someone once said. Camila did a portrait of me for a college project. So what if we deconstruct anger instead. I think of anger as a response to lack of agency. It is what we turn to when there appear to be no choices, when there are no viable options. Or at least, none that we like. So maybe that doesn't work so easily, because there is still agency there.  Maybe, anger is one of our core emotions, something like love, where even small children can treat a puppy with love, cuddle a stuffed animal with care, or even caress an infant sibling with the tenacity of a loyal care giver. And like these expressions of love and compassion, there are also the primal expressions of anger, the frustration...

Lust  (A continued meditation on the 7 Deadly Sins) There is something about the lithe dexterity of a hummingbird, the purposeful industriousness of its movements, so definitive in its forward and reverse, its assessment, and then it flies away.  When I see a hummingbird, I want to be in its presence, to hear its high speed whir tickle the inner ear, to stop whatever it is I am doing and pay attention. To know, this is a moment. Who does not yearn to be in the presence of a hummingbird? The iridescent colors, to be caught in that opal eye, to drink in the sweetness of flower, of sugar water, a life sustained by pleasure. In comparison, our lives seem mundane, earthbound, sedentary.  Sometimes, when I feel lonely, or frustrated, in a funk, I'll start to peruse used instruments on the various internet showcases. Certain guitars have the right combination of shapeliness, the alluring selection of wood, and perfect compliment of finish, that makes you kn...

L. Today's deadly sin is supposed to be lust, and I have much to dwell on there, but, I need to take a pause because I just learned about a loss in our extended family. So I'll save lust for another day. Today, I'll meditate on love. A mother's love. Love within a family. I think it is easy to take these things for granted, especially when we are young. And many times, familial love is hard to understand because it comes from such different perspectives, such different angles. I do not know when I figured out my mother's expressions of love, except, I think it took until I was an adult, maybe even a parent myself, before I began to understand that, her admonitions when I was a child to clean up my room, were an expression of love. That her desire for me to cut my hair, was an expression of love. That her desire to have me wear nicer clothes, or eat healthier, or gain or lose weight, were all expressions of love. That she would cook for me and feed me, eve...

Gluttony So, to catch you, dear reader, up with the Pandemic Blog, after a particularly fruitless night, I decided to give myself an assignment to meditate on the Seven Deadly Sins... and now I'm up to gluttony.  One of my pandemic purchases was a set of wireless headphones. They are a wonderful upgrade from the tether of earbuds, and for my phone, searching for the damned dongle. Plus, the sound is much more encompassing and whether I am outside grilling while listening to the collaborative video I had the honor of participating in to support the Northampton Arts Council's COVID-19 Artists Relief Fund , or listening to my Spotify jazz guitar mix while raking last fall's leaves from the perimeter of the yard, or as I've done the last few nights, listening to full concerts of the Grateful Dead on YouTube while working on my blog.  Circa 1989 I have to admit, I'm a little wary to admit that guilty pleasure here. For a small period of my life, the Gratef...

Envy So, in my meditative tour of the 7 Deadly Sins, apparently the next stop is envy. It is a strange one, not what I would have expected to crop up second. But I suppose when I think about childhood unhappiness, it makes sense... and if we are shaped by our childhood experiences and they shape our neurosis as adults... then perhaps it is important to delve into. Our neighborhood plant store gave us some flowers with our purchase! I grew up in a suburb of Boston, first in Quincy, then in the much more affluent Weston. In both communities I remember us as one of the only non-white families in our neighborhoods. This set up a norm that was aligned with the representation of what it meant to be an American in books, on television and in the movies. As a child there was such a deep desire to fit in because these were the characters and people one admired and aspired to become,  and in the 1970s and 80s there was very little sense of how to maintain a strong sense of ide...

Pride After last night's failed blog post, I thought I might set up a series of meditations, so I started coming up with possible topics. I remembered how when I was in college, Thomas Pynchon did a series on the 7 Deadly Sins that were published in the New York Times, if I remember correctly. I did not even remember what the deadly sins were... pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth. If I remember correctly, I think Pynchon started by giving the dictionary terminology, and a quick Google search gives some theological epistemologies, but for now I stay off of that track... except for what my eye did catch, which was that pride is the sin from which all other evils emanated.  I suppose the inverse of pride is shame, so there must be some relationship between the two.  In my mind, I always had the capacity to imagine myself as I wished I appeared. When I was in grade school I used my mother's old college Smith Corona and typed out my autobiography, b...

Slurry Fifty six days. It is Monday already. The weekend feels like an afterthought. There is chili cooking on the stove. Apparently, there is a difference between cans of diced tomatoes and pureed tomatoes. My son graduated from college Friday. The pandemic sometimes feels like we are playing out our lives as online personas. Who has anything left to give any more? It is unbearably cold. It is hard to start writing again after the weekend off. I am still reading the news, but I try not to think about it. A frame of photographs in my office. The last brownie in a plastic container. There is tomorrow. From Our Friends: From Teaching Tolerance: Affirming Black Lives Without Inducing Trauma:   This week, we were disappointed to see wide circulation of the videos showing Ahmaud Arbery's and Sean Reed's shooting deaths. Educators have a responsibility to engage with students about this violence against Black men—and the white supremacist systems th...