After two years, I finally caught Covid a fortnight ago. One hug with my eldest and a day later we’re all shuffling around zombie-like with a scratchy throat. It took four days in bed and another six in isolation before I was free. And, eurgh, it was horrible. And, goodness, I know how lucky I was compared to many. And yet, in a strange way, being ill and bedbound, also offered another perspective.
In my peak of delusional, sheet-sweaty, fever, my brain seemed to find a new-found freedom, zipping this way and that with the ecstasy of a child left alone in a sweet shop.
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Away from routine distractions, I toured my past in more detail, I examined the choices of my present, I reflected on time and my age and what I wanted next from life. And half drunk on a heady mix of paracetamol, Ribena and warm Weetabix, I started to create new stories – other kinds of stories.
A different lens
I had been writing a short story the week before I became ill – something that was probably true to my usual style, instinct and voice. In my sick bed, my brain detached from its typical tethers, I found myself instinctively creating an entirely new short story, something utterly different. Hot fever rushed my mind in new directions, down neural pathways that had been forgotten, like old roads abandoned by a new highway. Without the constructs of my usual routine and established outlook, I was able to perceive everything through a new lens – aching and hot-cheeked, yes, but a lens that offered a more weird and wonderful view, and frankly, maybe more original.
It's acted as a stark reminder to myself, to always question my creative choices. In the past I've sometimes used a maze exercise when I plot a story. A simply drawn maze which helps me examine any particular story choice, to see where it gets stuck and to pictorially nudge me to try again, another path, another choice. I return to the beginning, until I find a strand that leads me more successfully into the maze. It helps to show me the choices I could have made – that might have failed – and to encourage me ... to never settle.
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Which way now?
Post-fever, I did a lot of sitting while I waited for the little white stick to reward me with one red line not two. I dwelled some more on my own life's maze and the walls of construct I live by – both in life and creatively. How I both need and yet can become trapped by these walls. I did a little tapping, to try and spot which were paper-thin, constructed whimsically without foundations, and which were made of sturdier stuff, providing essential scaffolding ... and which might result in dead-ends.
The old corporate adage to step outside of the box might be jaded, but it still rings true. Our constructs keep us safe, help us know what to expect and how to navigate life, yet they can also book-end our experiences in ways that solidify our aspirations and trap our brains in a predictable maze of existence. If any experience is a mere construct, a system for a way of looking at life, then it can also do the same to control, dull and limit our imaginations. To get a different perspective, maybe like Neo we need to choose the little red pill and dissemble our life's constructs; maybe select a different, unfamiliar, route in the maze; or maybe try hanging upside down for a wholly different perspective on what we see.
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Meanwhile, I'll take one red line over a red pill, and step outside again. I'm going to try and hold onto the feverish freedoms my brain enjoyed, to ignore the new highway and keep those old neural roads open for a while. Maybe I'll resist re-assembly of my own maze of existence, and practice some new constructs for my creativity. But mostly I'll remind myself how lucky I've been. Happy Easter!
1 comment:
That was so interesting. I am v sorry you got Covid, but it was fascinating to read about the way you used the horrible experience & how it prompted you to think 'outside the box'.
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