I know I said the December 7 small magic would be the last one for this year. Then my brain fog lifted a little, my feelings got even bigger, and I had a little more coffee than usual. So here we are.
CW: Brief mention of attempted suicide (rhetorical, not personal) immediately after the photo of a haunted swan ornament. If you’d like to read a version of this essay with that paragraph redacted, please let me know and I’ll make one for you.
Inhale and let your right hand gently rise, the left hand descend. Exhale, turn your upper body, and watch your hands float by. The important thing to remember is that you aren’t moving your hands. You’re moving your body, like the wind, and the clouds can’t help but follow.
My favorite tai chi instructors record their lessons near a body of water—some on a boardwalk by the ocean, others by a stream. Today’s teacher leads a class on tai chi walking for beginners from a small wooden platform beside a pond. I’m studious and serene, breathing slow and even, repositioning my feet and shifting my weight as she instructs.
The lesson is nearly ended when the swan appears behind her. It looks enormous, especially compared to the teacher’s small frame. Within the space of a few seconds, the great swan sizes her up, rears out of the water, and beats its wings in a threat display. My breath catches in my throat. I know how dangerous swans can be, especially within their territory.
The instructor doesn’t flinch or pause in her flow. She keeps her back to the riled-up animal and her body moving. There’s no indication she even realizes the bird is there. I’m still holding my breath when the swan glides away.
Tye calls and I tell him the swan story. We discuss swan aggression and my instructor’s close call. He says How long would you have to isolate before you’d approach an angry swan? We laugh and laugh, and then I stop laughing.
He’s asked because I am isolated, even more than usual. It’s been a week and a half since I tested positive for COVID, again, and told him to stay away. I haven’t seen him, or anyone, for ten days.
For someone as introverted as I am, ten days alone should be a breeze. But life has been so very relentless lately. I am frayed, brittle, numb, and stumbling. I need a warm hand to hold.
The swan question was a joke, but I’m an autistic poet, prone to simultaneously taking things literally and turning them into metaphor. And what a rich one this is. Think about it, I said to Tye. Approaching a furious swan is like jumping off a bridge. There’s a pretty good chance it won’t actually kill you, but it’s going to hurt like hell, and your life will be much, much worse when it’s over.
There is no good reason to engage an irate swan. If you want a thrill, there are a million other options, nearly all of them more fun than having your limbs shattered by a hissing white dinosaur. And this is the point, why it’s such a solid measure of desperation: How lonely would you have to be before you chose to feel worse? How long can you endure the discomfort before you completely self-destruct?
I suspect the range of truthful responses stretches from ten seconds to infinity. I recall the people in 2020 saying “I must party at the club! It’s for my mental health!!!!!” I think of the hermits cloistered in their cottages and grottoes. This is perhaps not a fair comparison; a hermit’s solitude is, after all, self-imposed. And some of us are just naturally wired to be more content on our own. But after a while even voluntary isolation tests the limits of emotional endurance. Believe me, I know.
I know, too, that my baseline position on the swan-o-meter has changed. In my Before times—not before the pandemic began, but before I entered recovery—my threshold for discomfort was poor-to-average. I thought I was good at handling things, and it was true, some of the time. Other times the first whiff of loneliness, rejection, or uncertainty would send me zooming swanward. Back then I had no inkling that I was opting to self-destruct. I thought it was just happening to me. I was the cloud, not the guiding wind. Certainly not the sky.
The first recovery program I joined promoted something called The Promises. If you are good—if you do as we say, if you surrender your own agency, if you stay perfectly still so God can burn the sin out of you, if you embrace your cloud-ness and abandon any silly ideas about being the sky—then you will be permanently happy, then you will be free.
No part of this is useful, or helpful, or true. Freedom comes from holding yourself accountable, from saying I made some terrible choices and I am choosing to make different ones.
Happiness is more complicated. On the surface it seems obvious that renouncing our compulsions would immediately result in a happier life. Unfortunately, the compulsions are there for a reason: to shield us from what hurts. True recovery means scrubbing away the protective layers of grime to uncover a lifetime’s worth of pain. It’s a huge fucking bummer, to put it mildly. But it’s an honest bummer, a healing bummer, and in its own way, it feels really good.
Then comes the second test. Life happens, and a fresh batch of pain comes along. We could fall back into our old ways, here, skirting the pond, provoking the aggressor. Cruising for a bruising. Or we could let ourselves be sad while seeking the kinds of comforts that won’t break our bones.
If we choose this path and let the sky clear, in time the joy-clouds will drift in. They won’t stay forever; nothing does. But they will visit, wild, luminous, and so much fiercer than any joy we felt before.
I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not swan-shaming. (Except for the people who went clubbing in 2020. They should feel ashamed.) Life is hard, and we’re all getting along as best we can. And recovery doesn’t occur in a vacuum. The ability to consistently make better choices depends on having the resources, circumstances, and support to persevere. We need a safe home and people around us who understand. We must be the ones to do the work, but we can’t do it alone.1
I’m also not 100 percent swan-free myself; the punishments are just far less frequent now and take tinier, more laughable forms. Sometimes when I’m miserable I read advice columns or the synopses of upsetting horror movies, two activities that make me feel sickened and even more depressed.2 So yes, I do still summon my own suffering. Just not like I used to.
I am lonely tonight, and frightened of the future—the world’s, and my own. I still haven’t recovered from the long COVID that began a year and a half ago. It’s too soon to know whether this recent infection will make my long-term health even worse.
An earlier version of myself would be absolutely booking it for the swan pond. But as bad as things are, today I’m not even tempted. Instead I feel proud, and grateful, and amazed. And sad. And that’s ok.
I message a friend and say Do you have a few minutes? I’d love to take you up on that offer to get on Facetime and meditate. She does, and we do. Afterward I make a cup of tea and watch cartoons. I get out my watercolors and use every single blue. And when I’m ready, I press play on my tai chi videos for the evening, beginning with a review of last night’s material.
Again the swan glides onscreen and begins its threat display. Again the instructor continues her steady, graceful movements, seemingly oblivious to the danger she’s in. I feel a clutch of fear on her behalf, even though I already know how the video will end.
Relax, the instructor says, guiding us back into a neutral stance. She smiles. Good.
As the screen fades to black, she turns, still beaming, to face the rippling spot behind her where the bird had been. She calls across the water as though greeting an old friend.
Hello, swan.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading all the way to the end. I know this one was a bit longer than usual. There was a lot to say.
Cloud and pissy swan photos via Unsplash; cursed swan ornament from John Derian Company.
If recovery sounds like something you’re ready to try, I am very, very proud of you. Recoverydharma.org is a good place to start.
The advice column thing is truly bizarre. I have no idea. Even the good ones make me feel oily and wretched.
1. You have taken me back to when I used to study tai chi under a teacher named Weilun Huang, who taught in the middle of a small park called "All Wars" (as in remembering veterans of all wars, but also, well, that's a name) in a part of North Miami that I think a lot of my friends would consider "sketchy" especially after dark. There were no swans, but probably alligators in the canal and occasional hecklers shortcutting across the grass, and on one occasional someone who wasn't entirely right first tried to follow along with the class (fine) then tried to stop everything and get in Sifu Huang's face. There was not a physical altercation, but I can't say exactly why. There was a lot of calm imperturbability and graceful, fast movements as Sifu Huang shifted so he was between the interloper and one student or another, totally impassive and perhaps unbothered (there were some gasps from class, though). I suppose the most beautiful thing was the way the situation just evaporated and the unpredictable fella just ... left.
2. I know how this is likely to sound, but the science APPEARS to be valid here - a Lancet study (double-blind, OK-sized study group) recently published on long covid and gut biome: https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/09/probiotics-to-treat-long-covid/ Might be worth keeping an eye on, at least, if you're not already. (You probably are, but I miss things all the time so ... why not risk being that guy just in case.) I hope the fog stays lifted and the stars continue shining.
Thankyou for sharing, I feel like I felt this to my very my soul, but I can't find the words to express it. Maybe, thank you is enough.