Carol Mackay Mertz

It is May 12, 2020. We must document each post, or personal journal entry with the precise date during this particular year of ever present and rapid change. Given a week or a few days, perspectives shift rapidly, reality momentarily flutters into focus and then is gone again. Time is definitely a transient phenomenon.

Tonight after a marvelous leftover dinner, my husband suggests we have some *#&@$((&*. What is that you ask? It is a German liquor made as a digestive, it’s real name, Yeagermeister. We often , almost always, forget the real name. So we utter some German sounding gibberish, and the other of us nods their head and produces said bottle from the freezer and pours a modicum of elixir into a minuscule aperitif glass.

On this occasion, I felt around on the top shelf of the freezer and found a small bag of chocolates. These chocolates, no bigger than a dime also had peanut butter inside them. I have no idea where they came from. They had an expiration date of 2014 on them. I tasted one and let it melt in my mouth with a bit of after dinner coffee. They tasted quite deliciously current, as if they were made yesterday, not six years ago.

So this idea about time… it seems to be unraveling as quickly as the rest of reality in the moment. How to describe this ephemeral visitation of relevance. Life as we knew it in February 2020 had an expiration stamp upon it. It is over with and life as we knew it then is gone, life as we experience in the now is ever shifting.

It is ever shifting.

There is a desire to quickly create a new normal. I sense creating a new normal, while the sands of time are still shifting radically, is akin to preparing a dinner for 250 persons when not one of those persons knows they are invited to dinner. Mmmm, lots of wasted energy, not to mention food.

On the other hand, timing is everything! Timing is like guidance from a higher wisdom source.

Since the beginning of March, 11 weeks ago, we have been looking for toilet paper to buy and for those 11 weeks we have never found any to buy. A few weeks ago, in the continual search, I went into a Walgreens and asked if they were getting a new shipment of toilet paper. The clerk said, their truck came in between 12:30 and 1:30pm. They never knew what was on it but if there was toilet paper, then they would have it then. A few weeks passed. I remembered the conversation, and we were in town at around 1:30 pm. I told my husband to check them out. Low and behold there was toilet paper on the shelves and he purchased some. A small but mighty feat!

No other store for 11 weeks, would give us this coveted information. I was in town for an appointment, at the “right time” and low and behold toilet paper was in fact on the shelf. Timing!

So time and timing shake down differently. I am finding a lot of paraphernalia in crowded drawers, top shelves of freezers, and closet recesses that are not only useful, but valuable in a time when the old supply lines kept us thinking in one way, instead of a multitude of other ways.

Creators are us! Necessity is the Mother of invention.

I have friends who are making masks for others in their communities . Those numbers of creators are multiplied by the thousands, as suddenly people who can sew and have machines find themselves in a position to contribute to their communities at a deep and relevant level of community service. Before this “time” that need did not exist. These creators are not associated with the Federal government, or any organization on a large scale. They saw the need and they responded. Rosie the riveter comes to mind.

I once knew a man who flew “ The Hump” in WWII. He said to me that the US helped to win that war solely by the participation of the civilian response to being called into service on a national level. Without that total focus on winning that war, there would have been no victory by the armed services.

Is this being called to service, temporary? Or is this a timing of extraordinary relevance. Are people waking to a new reality which empowers each and everyone of us to rise to the occasion, …students finding a new way of getting the job done. Families finding a new way of living a daily round. Children looking to parents for learning, cooking new foods, sometimes what’s in the pantry foods and finding absolutely NEW WAYS OF BEING, DOING, and THRIVING!

I tend to look at the big picture. That’s what artists, seers, and futurists do. But I also keep my eyes open for the opportunity to purchase toilet paper. It’s what we humans do. Be with what is and dream of what can be.