Life in these strange times: Endless Hours

Today's blogging prompt for the Ultimate Blogging Challenge was the offer a piece of advice. What sort of advice do I offer during such a scary time? I'd suggest using your imagination, without letting it run amuck. It is easy to let your imagination run away with you. Sometimes your imagination is your friend. When you are painting something abstract, that is your interpretation of the world. That is a way to harness your imagination to create something original. But when you allow your fears to rule your imagination, it's not very helpful. 

But it's going to happen. I don't know how to control the negative part of my imagination. It doesn't seem to have an off button. And the same may be true for you. What I've tried to do is to put the terror and the imaginings of the worst case scenario to work for me. Many artists and writers and musicians have done that. They create operas and novels and horror movies that vividly depict the fear that we all face. And the fear that we all face is generally of the unknown.

The experience that we are sharing is something new, something different, and we don't understand it. It doesn't have a set end date. We can't relax social distancing for any religious holiday, and that includes Easter. The pandemic doesn't take holidays. 

So why not harness that fear and unleash your creative energy? Draw a picture, made a video, write a poem. Or do something else that expresses who you are. You might be surprised that the medium that calls to you is not the creative medium that you would normally choose.

I chose to write a poem. And, no, poetry is not the creative medium that I would normally choose to express myself. I would choose to draw or paint or to write a story or an article. None of those styles were happening for me today. I needed to express feelings, not describe my world. And poetry felt right. The form that I chose was a sonnet, and the style of sonnet is called terza rima. It is an Italian poetic form. It has fourteen lines, with ten syllables per line. The rhyme pattern is ABA, BCB, DCD, DAD, AA.

Today is E day in the A to Z blogging challenge, so I titled my poem "Endless Hours."

Endless hours sitting inside the house.

In unquiet solitude, I don’t move.

Heart beating loudly beneath my stiff blouse.

Separated from the world, it behooves

us to be still and silent observers.

The world spins without us when we can’t move.

How do we stop our fear, our pained fervor,

of a silent foe that we cannot see?

We grasp, we hope for a life preserver.

From our familiar world, we cannot flee.

We cry out, we complain, and we grouse,

As slaves to our fears, we cannot feel free.

But silence thunders louder than a mouse

When your whole world has shrunk down to your house.