Disconnected || The Creative Pandemic

I wrote another blog post for The Creative Pandemic called Disconnected, about moving house and not having the internet. You can read it in full here or further down below. 

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DISCONNECTED

The feeling of being disconnected.

I have not had this in a while, maybe when lying in a hospital bed and thinking about all the fun that my friends were having out there, in the summery sun-kissed world. 

(I have moved into a house with the love of my life – I feel like I should precursor this mope with my own context, by the way, I am happy.)

At the moment we have no internet and are busy moving-in; painting, decorating, searching, planning, eating, etc. My mind is taken up by all manner of things like, ‘Where the hell is the dustpan and brush?’ and, ‘Why is this microwave so complicated?’

And yet, when it comes to the witching hour, a term I heard from a friend who has recently given birth, which is when daylight warps into dusk and babies find it disturbing and cry, I get the heebie-jeebies wash over me too.

It’s a certain sinking feeling you get, as if you were in a cavernous auditorium and the lights are being switched off one by one from the back. It’s the encroaching darkness that dampens my mood. It’s why the Danes have hygge, right?

I feel even more out of joint from my normal routine. I have no internet, so can’t check my inbox for unread mail. Usually this means nothing to me, but this is not the deep truth because they do mean something to me, they are my normality. 

I usually unlock my phone out of habit like sighing deeply after climbing a hill, and when I see those red notifications my pulse rate lowers, then I carry on. Even if I return the device to the crevices of my pocket without checking them, it does the trick.

I was never aware of this sort of dependency. I watch my drinking, I watch my sugar intake, but do I watch the number of times I light up my phone for no reason? Pretending to check the time and date although I can’t seem to hold it in my head for more than the split second it took for the light to flash on and off. But the colours of my friends on my wallpaper brighten up my boredom to give me a hit of happiness in these gloomy times.

 

First Winter Morning

Blink blink sunlight passed over the horizon and the playing fields of clouds rolled out over the misty blue. A letter with two fish sealed upon the envelope had arrived awaiting my thumbing. The days at work seem long and dreary because of the on-off central heating the lack of cats and the dead lightbulb turned upside down on the adjacent table, ‘I’ll buy a new one at lunch’ I say feebly and never do. Screw-in tops, I’m cautious of buying the wrong size. The boss suggests I embrace what the Danes do ‘hygge’ and I wish I could so I try and do it but the only glitch is it’s difficult to do alone.

I think of my friend in America where the weather must be getting “pretty baltic” as he described it over an e-mail from long ago. New York in Winter. I wonder if it’s prettier of more wintry than here? Two sprawling mega-cities with cosmopolitan folk and rundown neighbourhoods. Do they have council Christmas lights? I notice that on my street to work the lights on the lampposts aren’t lights but green shrubs made of plastic and shiny spindles. This street mustn’t have the budget for lights. 

The envelope contained a pale blue letter with a black and white photograph glued to the reverse. The small things really count, I guess. This little messenger guided by two swimming fish on the creased white paper tossed and turned over mailbags and conveyer belts. Guarded by perfectly formed handwriting. ‘What’s you landscape?’ she asks. 

That self-induced dawn, the first Winter’s morning was brimming with light but shy. Her streaks of pearl pink brushed against the sides of flat clouds but if you looked closely she could have been the aurora in disguise. I think of Orkney and the crashing waves on to a placid shore that’s seen it all. The cliffs are grand but unassuming. The few weathered goats that eat seaweed are as much part of the landscape as the jutting out rocks from beneath the sea. Sometime seals bask blubbery and gleaming with snouts like dogs and big wide eyes. I delight at the sea. So to answer your question, that’s my landscape Annina, but this will do for now.