I Bear Witness

I've been moulting. Since the start of the pandemic, actually. I couldn't access my dermatologist, so I just stopped using my prescription face cream. My skin began to peel, tiny bits of translucent deadness, falling off as I detoxed. I didn't realize there was something alive underneath. Underneath, the skin is pink, tender and fresh. Having seen it, I know I will never return to unthinkingly slathering on my prescription. There is too much to which I've now born witness.

What are these things? They are things that surrounded me every day, that I never thought to explore. On my walk this morning, grand trees that stand firm in the ground, they have bark that is

papery whitesilver

gray brown but tinged with poison green lichen

purple

and their leaves are of

wine

green and white

dark green fragrant with peach colored tulip flowers.

They have stood sentry before the pandemic and will remain. What deity has made this world that I have never seen before with my eyes? Who could be so powerful as to make a sky that changes color by the hours, clouds that are pinkwhitegold and fluffy or lavenderneonorange and flat? Who could build a planet that self sustains, with rain that falls from the sky, part of a light and sound show thunderstorm on a hot summer day? When the sun shines, I feel it now, on my walk. I know that when I walk through a shadow it will be colder, but warm again when I emerge. I know that there are creatures that fly through the air in different ways

birds that fly

butterflies that flutter

hawks that soar

bees that zzzzoom

insects that hop and leap

kestrels that dive

flies that land and fly and land and fly and land.

I never saw them before. Well I did and I didn't. They were lumped into a category called "Nature" that I spent a passing second on before thinking about how the workday went and what time practice would be and who would get the kids to their annual doctor visit and what we should bring to the picnic and whether my coworkers pissed mood was about something I did or something else entirely.

But now I bear witness.

Unlocked, I have time to be curious, to try new things. First, a papaya, long and sweet and floral. A spaghetti squash, which is bright orange and filled with thousands of strands, sardines filleted in olive oil, rich and salty. Theses were things that were not part of my routine before, so I never noticed them in my shopping-fugue.

Curiosity only fed my hunger for more. There are books to read, music to hear and study, history to learn, all have always been available to me. If I'd only cared to make inquiry. How did I have the audacity to live in this miraculous world, so ripe and abundant with color, sound, sensation, texture and yet block and close my eyes, my ears, my mouth in the name of

efficiency

habit

custom

frugality

safety

doing what everyone else does.

No more. I have my pink, raw skin and I will never go back to being dead. That grey coral inside my skull has brined in the warm bath of the pandemic and found it life-giving.

I won't be worrying any more about who I may have pissed off or whether or not I'll know what to do with that strange fruit at the grocery store. I am unlocked now. I bear witness and I will taste and explore.