I am sitting at my blonde circular table when lockdown number five is declared. My supervisor contacts me as soon as the press conference concludes. Brace yourself, the message reads. For the remainder of the day my phone rings in a way I haven’t yet experienced in this role until I am afraid of my phone and consider submerging it in water. On the other end of the line are panicky, anxious voices. There are women who fear their husbands and addicts who fear relapse, as well as more mothers of daughters with eating disorders than I can keep up with. My to-do list fills up this way. One woman yells at me several times and I go to bed a little traumatised. I even change my ringtone, anything to erase the weight of the day.
I pull back the blinds and hear only the pedestrian traffic lights from the intersection at the corner. My suburb seems to have been choked by silence, a bleak and perpetual four-pm inertia. There is concrete for as far as I can see. I slide into my car and drive a few postcodes over to collect a painting, which will fill the final empty space in my home, a wall in my bedroom. I would have you in, the artist starts. No, no, I stop him. And wait outside for him to deliver the painting to my car. We discuss the present situation, the twenty-two cases, and I ask him how he finds it all. He laughs and shakes his head only to tell me he likes it, a lot. Melbourne needs this, he says to me seriously. So, he says next, if this is what it takes then be it. Rain starts falling. He pulls his sleeves over his hands and hunches his shoulders as if these mannerisms work to create an umbrella over his head. I thank him and tell him I will send him a photograph when it is hung.
Anne says if I keep my distance, I am allowed to use her bath. I pop over three times in a single week to soak my body. Each time I visit, no matter the time of day, Anne answers the door in her pajamas and while the patterns change, they are always made from flannelette. Anne is slow and particular about things one ought to be particular about like the smells and sounds and textures one interacts with every day. There are special salts and oils and cakes made especially for tea. Lockdown suits her just fine, she says removing a cake from the oven. It is an apple one which, while not particularly sugary, makes me feel sweet. In the bath, I read about Basquiat and Suzanne and Madonna and Andy. The book, Window Basquiat, reaches out and embraces me like an arm. It is books like these, I think, where you walk away reconsidering everything you ever thought you understood.
Em is outwardly pleased about the lockdown. At first, her enjoyment of the situation disgruntles me until I realise her enjoyment is indicative of other things. Em’s life is the kind of busy that when you look too close for too long, you feel anxious and exhausted by way of osmosis. It is the same sensation as when I watch people emerge from a nightclub in broad daylight. It is often a sunny morning and I have just left the pool. These people are usually very high and their bodies, I imagine, are clammy and resentful. What these instances share in common is the way they make me grateful, very grateful, for being in the situation and body I occupy. I am made to see, clearly, the time and health available to me.
Writer, Katherine May, points out that our culture is being made to go through a proper Wintering moment. May regards our individual responses to this moment, which range from anxious to defiant to angry, as reflecting our means of living (privilege) as well as how we choose to occupy our time. For Anne and The Artist, there is seldom reaction, the two are unperturbed because this slowing down is not a jarring imposition but consistent with how they already choose to live their lives. For Em, however, it is an immense relief. Her rest is not only legitimised but is, for once, non-negotiable. May suggests for reasons, all of which relate to late capitalism, we have become a culture too preoccupied with output and productivity. She wants to know why rest has become unfashionable and wonders, tethered online the way we are, if we even know what rest is.
There is nothing much to do but go walking for a very long time. I don’t click play on a podcast. I do not desire entertainment or need to be distracted, there is too much to wrap my head around in the here and the now. Like the fact that I have passed only two people in my seven kilometers of walking. Rain starts falling again -it will fall all week- the heavy droplets make large circles on my pavement. I pull on my raincoat and enjoy the way the falling water collides with the material around my head in soothing taps, it is a welcome percussion. I feel immediate relief being out of my bedroom and seeing the amount of green I do. There is a Japanese word for this, a man told me last week. We were driving through the city after having spent several days out of the city. I was experiencing a profound sense of vertigo when I looked up and out of the window at all the high rises. At the time, the lockdown was nothing more than a rumor in a voice memo on my phone, which I expressed my doubts over.
The Japanese practice is called Shinrin-Yoku, in which Shinrin translates to ‘forest’, and yoku to ‘bath’. Therefore Shinrin-Yoku denotes immersing oneself in a natural atmosphere and taking this environment in through all the senses. I typed the term into a search engine to learn Shinrin-Yoku was first developed in Japan after the second world war, in the late seventies, in response to the mass urbanisation of the country. Shortly after this period, medical professionals observed a significant decline in mental and emotional wellbeing in those exposed to these profoundly urbanised areas. Nature Bathing served as an antidote to this. There are now forty-four recognised Shinrin-Yoku forests in Japan. As I walk, I start to consider if the people who call up to book an appointment with me are acquainted with this practice. It might do them some good.
I pass by an elderly man walking with little purpose. His face, grey and blank, dips a smile at me when we pass. I throw a few volts into my smile back, a few more than usual, actually. I imagine turning around and asking the man if I can walk with him. This stranger craving must be a symptom of confinement, I reason. A couple then overtakes me. They bob up and down quickly as if they don’t have the time to be walking. When they pass they say something under their quick breaths, something about my mask, which is less of a mask than a piece of limp material hanging under my chin. My sister-in-law calls them chin nappies. I say nothing back to the perky couple but spend the remainder of the walk thinking about how we are a strange and compliant kind. I pause under a dead, blunt tree whose trunk is so smooth it looks computer-generated. At the base of the dead tree is a marvelous patch of daffodils. The daffodils are all yellow, yellow, yellow – the brightest kind.
Then, in the distance, two salient objects appear. They are bright yellow in a landscape of predominantly greys and browns. We are separated by the muddy Yarra River, the very river my great, great uncle drowned in once upon a time. It occurs to me that ever since reading Alexis Wright, I do not look at the Yarra as a river as much as the floor the belly of the rainbow serpent created as it slid through this landscape. The two objects grow in size until I realise they are not objects but human men, postmen to be exact. The pair ride idly side by side enjoying the path, usually busy with nine-fivers at this time, all to themselves.
I pass a salmon pashmina tied to a post and walls caked with indiscernible graffiti. Under the bridge, close to home, there is a street artwork of Adam Goodes, opposite this is a large advertisement by Carmen’s sachet oats in which the billboard reads ‘more than just porridge’. A duck skids across the water, followed by another. They glide past two kookaburras grooming themselves on a tall barge of rubbish. On the path, there are single-use face masks scattered like confetti. My foot dodges a Tim-Tam packet, then a strong latte for Karen.
Back at the deli’s front door, the inertia persists. I say hello to the capable chef from the Thai restaurant who is arriving for another evening of takeaway service and wave lazily at the not-so-capable pizza chef, whose product I’ve just about given up on. We greet each other mechanically today with a clear air of disillusion. Dawn descends all warm and wispy and watercolor. I enjoy it from my bed, half reclined with a gin and tonic. It’s not until later, when loosening my sauce with pasta water, that it occurs to me what I should have said to the perky couple was that they ought to stay in their own lane.
Yellow Days 