Phoenix ...errrr

When the world first became aware of COVID-19 and Australia decided to lock down, I went online to my favourite tapestry company, Ehrman, based in England and sourced a fabulous kit which depicted a Phoenix Rising and was complex enough to keep me occupied as we waited out this viral menace. I had also decided that it would be a fitting birthday present for my sister who was celebrating an 0 birthday in the month ahead. She was coming off a big decade, we had lost our mum in the past year and adding in a global pandemic, the Phoenix worked. I had hope.

Which was dashed when one morning my emails contained one from Erhman who advised that they were closed for business for the foreseeable future due to COVID- 19 and would advise me when they were again in business. Given the British response to the pandemic , I was not optimistic.

Making do, I waded through any tapestry websites still open for business and sourced an Elizabeth Bradley Parrot tapestry kit which featured a rather beautiful bird called Alister. Alister kept me company in the weeks of limited social interaction which denoted our first COVID response and I was delighted to complete him just as the pandemic seemed to have been halted with fabulous success across our country. He was a stunning bird who now adorns a cushion in my sister`s house.

After I had finished the cushion I researched the significance of parrots and I found that trusted psychic mediums .com advised that " the parrot spirit animal is a message of celebration. It's a happy expression of all the good things that are happening in your life, and the good things that you have yet to experience. It symbolises the everyday beauty that you possess and which you are surrounded with." The parrot worked. Alister was a reminder that despite the hardships, there is beauty in the world and in a world which was not demanding my engagement, it had been possible to see the loveliness that is our world, more clearly.

And our world opened up again. In Australia, we congratulated ourselves on our management of this virus, and one day, an email from Ehrman popped into my inbox advising that they were open for business. I got the Phoenix shipped, this time to be completed as a nostalgic reminder of a difficult period.

As the number of people with infection and the death toll has steadily risen in my state of Victoria over the months since we congratulated ourselves on managing this virus , the tapestry kit has been unopened. Mid morning each day I have watched our elected officials and health professionals, their faces growing tired and stressed, relay messages of defeat and increasing urgency. And I have felt exhausted and unable to assemble my tapestry frame and cottons to begin work on the rising bird. Somehow it hasn`t felt appropriate.

Now we are back in lock down. I have some freedoms where I live in the regions but in our wonderful major city, movement outside the house has been severely curtailed. Unless we stop mingling with each other, the virus will continue to infect people so we can no longer mingle. This morning as I listened to a recounting of unremittingly ghastly world events , most centred around the pandemic , I also sifted through my strategies for emotionally managing my current reality. Turn off the television was the first that came to mind but I have felt the need to know not just the data but the whole awful catastrophe which feels like our world at the moment and denying the reality of our circumstances has not worked for me. Binge watching Sarah Millican is however a fabulous diversion. And I meditate.

I realise that I have stopped entertaining hope as that relies on a future which feels unknowable given the current forces shaping our world. I also know that I want different reality to emerge from this period , a transformation of some kind and I do not want to be disappointed.

I also realise that I am increasingly impacted by moments of wonder. A a man in a documentary photographs the most remarkable spiders webs`, walking the city with a friend pre dawn, the city skyline comes into focus and is beautiful, a large pale brown bird settles in the walnut tree outside my window and makes a piping call until I sit up and engage with it. I have never seen a bird like this and yet here it is. In this period of constraint and distance, there is time to notice. And I simply wonder.

Ehrman make wonderful tapestry kits. Today I have strung the rising bird and begun a few tentative stitches.