The Big Malaise

I came upon an image of a prize-winning painting by Eliza Muntz. The artist writes: My self-portrait explores the human response to societal trauma. It reflects on the events of 2020 onwards and how we sought uncomfortable solace indoors, often in the dark confines of the bedroom, metaphorically tucked ‘under the doona’. (She’s Australian - the idiom there means ‘under the covers.‘) The Big Malaise is a contemporary commentary on the pandemic and our inability to wake up and return to established routines. The composition centers around my reclining form, draped with bedsheets, my face conveying an uncomfortable grimace.

Her cupped hands made me think of my own body, and its increasing longing for comfort.

I think of the woman I often see standing outside a modest ranch house. She shuffles down her driveway. Or she simply stands, in a flowery housecoat and slippers, staring. Or she bends down to pick up a stray branch. One day she shuts an empty mailbox. One day she holds a small broom. Her hair is grey and short, shapeless. She is always alone, and always coatless, whatever the weather. She seems to be just “outside,” with no purpose. I have a friend who thinks that when people set up lawn chairs in their garages or at the edge of asphalt driveways it’s an inspiring example of making the best out of things. I worry that it’s a symptom of our complete detachment from nature and community.

In the viewing of a passing car or witness, I cannot just be standing in my driveway in broad daylight. I may be mis-read. That is today’s culture. We must always be doing something. Have a stride, a purpose, a direction, a goal, a money-making scheme, a future date, a career strategy, some life upgrade, a re-fi, a next child, another puppy, a better car, relocation, confrontation with a difficult boss, the next book. Our bodies must move so that we are in time, and in a state of mastery. In this way we try to reassure each other, and ourselves.

The artist is 16 years old, but she knows something about “our inability to wake up.”

I don’t want my neighbors or anyone driving by to ever see me the way I see the woman in the housedress. So I have a strategy. Because sometimes, you know, I too am outside my house, and perhaps I appear to have no purpose. Perhaps I appear to be home way too early in the afternoon. Sometimes I get up late, you see. No matter how early I go to bed, I am sluggish in the morning, and often wait quite a while before going outside my house to go to the end of the long driveway and grab the newspaper. I might still be in my version of pajamas – cotton bottoms and a long T-shirt, or leggings with a coat. My hair might be unwashed and a little too full, styled by sleeping.

So here’s the game I play with myself. I set an expression on my face in case someone sees me. A content, bemused expression. I try to bring a lilt into my stride, as if I were happy to be going down my driveway, as if it were just a little task in the middle of a very busy, happy day. I lift the corners of my mouth into a gratified smile, raise my eyebrows just slightly, to give the feeling of hope. If I bend to retrieve the newspaper, I bend quickly, to reassure the spectator that I am not infirm. I am springy, relaxed. I walk briskly back up the driveway, sometimes twirling the newspaper in its blue sack or hitting it against my leg.

If it is unclear that I am getting the paper or checking the mail, I may pause by a tree that still has a few red berries at the ends of parched wintry branches, examine them as if I were conducting a science experiment, reaching my arms high into the tree’s body. Why do I care? I believe we try to reassure each other, and ourselves.

2. I’m in a developmental stage, they say. I’m aging. It’s a whole thing. It’s like being a baby or learning to walk. When I scroll social media (one of my addictive pleasures), I am treated to a plethora of essays, articles and memoir excerpts about “aging well.” I myself have even been interviewed about how well I’m aging. I’m still working, albeit part-time. I don’t even like that phrase, “still” but it conveys just the right amount of admiration and fear. No one seems to want to be working in their seventies. I am actually my best self when I am working, so why would I give that up?

My physician, a tall, beautiful man from a Caribbean island (am I allowed to ask him which one?), who I’ve seen for over twenty years, says, with that beautiful accent, “why don’t you just go travel?? Go! Go! Go!” That’s the last thing I’d want to do. The effort involved sounds alien and exhausting. I think I’m supposed to want that, though. Even my hair stylist asked me if I had a bucket list for… the summer. I’d never even heard that before. It was so disappointing to hear. First, because I liked how she usually spoke very little, in contrast to all previous stylists, who used the bible of conversational phrases and questions: “Got any plans for the weekend? Tried any new restaurants lately? Shall we go shorter for the summer months?”

When Hope (not her real name) asked, I felt like we were going to fall into a well of phony small talk that quickly drains us introverts. I had no plans. Does it count that I was hoping my Stage 2 cataracts had worsened enough for the surgery that I actually craved so that I could read voraciously as I used to, and see the captions on Netflix? As she twisted individual chunks of hair between her slender fingers, readying them for the straightening iron and the styling product, I asked her if she had a bucket list for the summer. Her voice was soft and sweet. I think I heard her say, “oh, yes, I have to go to the beach, to Rhode Island, to Block Island, swim, boat, eat crabs, try new restaurants…..” As she applied the tap, tap, tap of the iron (she had a miniature one), making a sound with it I’d never heard before, I realized I couldn’t quite hear her (should I pursue the hearing aids? Like the cataracts, the last tester of my hearing said it was maybe too soon, but I could consider it….)

I seem to be in a state of “almost…but not yet…”

I filled my voice with conviction. “My husband and I are real homebodies and we have so many passions and hobbies.”

I looked down at the clumps of grey and white hair that would soon be swept away by a girl with a high voice and purple hair.

Does a haircut count as a social event?

3. I have more loungey clothes than going-out clothes. Capitalism exploits this phenomenon. My personal algorithm throws me ads of the silkiest, softest, most sensual-looking “tops and bottoms” – so many made of bamboo. How do they do that. I recall days in my twenties when I worked in office settings unhappily bound by suffocating panti-hose or “tights” that morphed into “leggings” of the future. When these pants arrive from companies with names like planets on Star Trek, they are inevitably too long. I am not tall. That I was promised “petite” or “short” seems to be a complex question of perception or semantics or universal guidelines, like what should my blood pressure be?

I should return the too-long pants, but I have often chosen companies with cryptic return policies, and bad reviews. Sometimes I just leave them in the dresser, duping myself into believing I will get them hemmed, or I will find an inventive way of folding them up.

Because my “still working” is done remotely, in Zoom meetings, the most important appearance feature is how I look from the breast upwards – like the bust-statues of Roman emperors. So bottoms can remain loungey. Styled hair, make-up, decent lighting, earrings and interesting necklaces can create a more vivid sense of my being than actually exists these days. I’ll wash my hair tomorrow….

I hear there’s a Trader Joe’s coming to my area. I tell myself I won’t do instacart but go inside for a packet of seaweed and some fresh flowers because I have to stay “in the game.” In the 1950s there was a board game called “The Game of Life.” Your tokens traveled around the board hitting successes or failures – marriage, jobs, buying real estate, having children. I’d like to see that board again. I’d like to remember the conventional markers, the developmental stages.

Is my current game “Use it or Lose it?” The Eriksonian scholars spoke of 8 Life Stages – the 7th being generativity vs. stagnation – (Now we teach. We’re wise. We pass torches. We leave legacies.) #8 is Integrity vs. Despair. I feel nothing reading those concepts, but I’ve always been a bit of an outsider, unconventional, an individualist. I don’t necessarily recommend the lifestyle, but what can you do? I do think a 9^th stage would be satisfying – Working With Less Than Optimal vs. Sinking into the Couch.

I DO have a bucket list item.. I have had a long-standing fascination with primates, and the women who studied them: Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey, etc. When I’m not scrolling loungey clothing, I’m watching chimps jump eagerly into the arms of children and adults, whooping and celebrating contact. In my bucket list, I travel to South Carolina. There’s a chimpanzee sanctuary there. They let you interact with the chimps. I can almost feel their furry arms around my neck. Their lives are not sad, either, as in many other situations.

But to get to Myrtle Beach, I’d have to get off the couch.

4. When did the Swedish concept of “hygge” (coziness) lose its trendiness? Those were my glory days! Thick socks, approval of however many soft cashmere throws you wanted, always a hot mug of something within reach, a tolerably scented vanilla candle lit, a good book and the right music. It’s very touching on the one Monday a month when the “ladies” come to clean - the way they roll up and arrange all the throws on the sectional couch suggests that have no idea what to do with all of them, let alone imagine why someone would have so many. They don’t drape. They bunch. They roll them like towels. The throw pillows are taut like decorations in a brothel. You won’t be sitting. You’ll be laying down soon.

Did someone once say “you can never have too much of a good thing?” It doesn’t seem to be true, after all. Along with societal urgings to travel in later years are warnings not to take too many naps or naps that are too long, lest you begin to show signs of “bed rot.”

There’s plenty to worry about there, especially if you have medical phobias and a vivid imagination. I have an appointment scheduled with my doctor because the various articles about fatigue and napping caution that certain nap lengths and frequency can indicate underlying diseases. I’m pondering how truthful I’m going to be when I see him. He’s quite fit (younger), plays soccer, and may mention scary-sounding conditions for which he’ll order complicated blood tests. Then I’ll spend days worrying about the results.

Meanwhile, I love napping under a soft blanket, my dog by my side. She’s old, too. I often glance at her to make sure she is still breathing.

I put my hand on her back.

We reassure each other.

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