Early August, 2020 and Melbourne is in Stage 4 lockdown in a fight to beat Covid-19. So far this year, Australia has had the worst bushfire season on record, which flowed immediately into plague, as we joined the rest of the world in fighting off a virus that takes no prisoners. All in all, the last 6 months have taken eleventy-five years to pass. And I have found creativity really hard to come by.

However, my oldest child turned 18 a few days ago and in trying to work out what to get the guy who asks for nothing, I decided to do an etching of him and his two besties dressed as pirates at his 4th birthday party (or any other event spanning 2004-2006). They were pirate mad! The beauty of this idea was that it could expand to include birthday gifts for all three of these gorgeous child-men, so I had a great time sifting through a literal lifetime of memories. Remember when we could hang with our loved ones? Oh the joys, how I miss those days!

Then, further benefits to the plan arose… I got to go and hang out with my dear friend and fabulous printmaker Lisa Sewards to avail myself of her beautiful company (and studio!) During a lovely day of printing together, she challenged me to write her a short story for a project she’s working on (a hopefully will happen show of her work in response to short stories). I of course said ‘no, I couldn’t… how embarrassment’ etc etc. then came home and wrote this. So, I have had two creative moments in the last eleventy-five years… and maybe that’s enough. But I hope there are more to come.

This story is dark and despairing, because that’s how lockdown makes an extrovert feel, but it’s also a little bit funny in places and it made me feel better putting it on paper. Hopefully it might help a few other people to name that existential angst we are all feeling and naming things leads to acceptance, which leads to peace. Or so I’m told.

See what you think…

DOG WALKING IN THE TIME OF CORONA (with apologies to Gabriel Garcia Márquez!)

by Bec Yule

I am constantly on the edge of tears. Not a delicate, gentle, glistening single tear sliding down one cheek, but a raging, cascading waterfall of pent up sobbing. Snotty, messy, ugly crying that makes everyone, myself included, really uncomfortable. But I can’t allow it. If I let that dam burst it might never stop and that simply cannot be. So I take the dog on a LOT of walks. So many, in fact, that the dog is also close to tears. He’s stopped doing his happy dance when I put my runners on ... now he just sighs and trudges towards the back door. He can’t actually bring himself to say no, but I can tell he’d really rather lie on his bed and dream. Well, wouldn’t we all?

In the beginning I liked to walk early in the morning, even if I had nothing to do and nowhere to go. In the early hours I had the streets to myself and I could listen to my podcast and pretend that we were in the before times. The good old days when the virus wasn’t ruling the world and we could actually live life like we meant it. In the early days of Corona, I thought I was having a heart attack. I had pain in my left side, couldn’t breathe and felt very panicky (which could be explained by the fact I thought I was having a heart attack!) The first time it happened it lasted about an hour, then my daughter got a weird rash and in the kerfuffle about that I forgot about my heart attack and it went away. ‘Must have been indigestion’, I thought to myself.

Then a couple of days later it happened again. I had a doctor’s appointment later that day, so I took it easy and mentioned it to her when I went in. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything, but then it occurred to me that the people who die of heart attacks are probably the people who don’t say anything.’ She curtly agreed and speed walked me to the heart monitor. ‘Are you stressed about anything?’ she asked. ‘Not that I can think of.’ I replied. ‘Not fussed by a global pandemic, mass job losses, climate change, a kid doing VCE and an unemployed partner?’ Turns out I was having panic attacks at best guess, and naming things has power, so the second I knew what they were, I stopped having them.

I also started to do things to prevent stress. Online yoga. Calling friends. Journalling. Dog walking.

I’ve been walking the dog for years at 5.30am, so if I stuck to doing that life felt normal for at least an hour each day. It’s the only hour in the day when I have the space to think, and I have had a few epiphanies, I can tell you. I also have a good lockdown story about the time I found a dead body. Well, I think it’s good ... you be the judge …

So there I was, walking the dog at 5.30am one morning and it was icy cold and pretty dark. Winter in Melbourne ... good times. I hadn’t been walking long (the podcast theme song was still playing) when something odd appeared out of the gloom ahead. ‘That looks like a freshly dug grave, with two feet sticking up at the end of it!’ I thought to myself, never before having thought about what that might look like, but immediately recognising it at 5.30am in the dark. I’m sharp. As we got closer, my expectation that it would be revealed to be something that was not a freshly dug grave with two feet sticking up at the end of it began to fade. It looked more and more like that the closer I got.

I can tell you, I was not quite as calm as I’m making it seem. My heart was jumping out of my chest when I drew level with the grave site, because that was exactly what it seemed to be. What I could see in the gloom appeared to be a rectangular piece of black felt placed over a body, with a pair of shiny leather brogues sticking up at the end of the rectangle. It took me about five seconds to decide that I was not the kind of person to intervene in this situation. I was definitely the kind of person who was going to walk as fast as they could away from the inconveniently located grave and hope I hadn’t made things worse from the safety of a long way away. I did not feel proud of myself as I scuttled away. I am a disappointment to myself still. Here is what went through my mind in that five seconds of decision making:

Could this be somebody sleeping on the nature strip? NO! Nobody would lie down flat on their back, in their good shoes and put a large rectangle of black felt over their entire body, including their face, laying it out perfectly flat all around them in the middle of a suburban nature strip on a Melbourne winter night. It makes no sense.

Is this really a dead body? NO! Surely not!! I thought about the possibilities: the house I was in front of belongs to an elderly couple ... maybe Nonno had died and Nonna hadn’t wanted to share a house with the body of her dead husband so she’d laid him out on the nature strip? Ridiculous. Not even physically possible, surely. She was ancient!

There’d been a murder and I had come along mid crime scene? Again, what?? Somebody had murdered someone and happened to have the makings of a freshly dug grave scene to hand so had set that up and then gone off to get their truck? Ridiculous.

Should I look under the cloth? NO! On a deep and instinctive level I knew that if I looked under that cloth whatever I saw would traumatise me forever, even if it was just a pile of old clothes. If it was a sleeping homeless person or a dead body, so much the worse. And the social awkwardness! ‘I’m so sorry, Sir... just making sure you’re OK, lying here in your grave?’ There was no upside...

Something about the whole scene felt slightly unreal, and the dog was ignoring it completely (and he sniffs EVERYTHING) so at some deep level of my soul, I didn’t feel like there was really a dead body under the black cloth.

So I scarpered! The dog and I made record time getting off that street, and it took me a good two blocks to get my heart rate back under control. I spent the next hour thinking of nothing else but what I should have done (Take photos! Call the police! Ask if ‘they’ were OK. Scream!) and trying to work out what exactly it was that I had stumbled across. I was a mess. Not enough of a mess to use my phone to call anyone. Not enough of a mess to turn around and go home to consult the husband. I know. I’m not proud of myself. I’m certainly not the woman I thought I was.

Anyway, I got home and woke up my husband, who I knew would be very excited to head out and investigate the possibility of a dead body in the ‘hood. He lives for that stuff. Sure enough, once he got the gist, he was out of bed and into his socially acceptable tracksuit for a quick investigative outing. I headed off to work, having had a shower before I woke him. I know. My lack of urgency upset him also. You’re getting the picture... I’m a terrible person.

It wasn’t long before I got a text message from the super sleuth:

I texted back:

<Yes, four houses along. I could see it from the end of the street in the dark. Are you just having a man look?>

Unsurprisingly he didn’t bother replying to that.

An hour or so later, I got another text.

Needless to say, that spiked the old heartrate way up. I clicked on the news item he’d sent... sure enough, a body had been found less than five minutes drive away from where I’d seen the body. I began to seriously doubt my own sanity. Had I really interrupted a crime scene mid crime????

<I’d say you interrupted a crime mid crime. Call the police?>

I read the article. A woman, unsuspicious circumstances. I’d seen men’s shoes and some very suspicious circumstances. I discussed it with my coworkers... it was certainly very mysterious. A disappearing dead body.

‘Is it rubbish day?’ asked the receptionist.

‘No, but it is hard rubbish this weekend... aaah...’ An explanation I was happy with finally appeared before me ... Nonna had obviously put out her very excellent Halloween prop as hard rubbish and while I’d finished my walk, another early morning type (someone obviously much braver than me, or with much better eyesight) had snaffled it for their very own. Maybe. It seems the most likely explanation for a freshly dug grave in suburban Melbourne to me, but my husband is convinced I let a murderer get away with the perfect crime. We’ll probably never know the answer, but I learned that I am not the brave and civic minded person I always thought I was, so there’s that. And I got a great dinner party story out of it, in case we’re ever allowed to have dinner parties again!

Back then being locked down seemed almost hopeful. A positive thing. We were taking action and we were going to win. Social media was full of lockdown sourdough recipes and fun online classes and activities. ‘We’re all in this together!’ we posted. Apart from the inconvenience of shops being stripped bare of toilet paper and pasta, a better world seemed possible. Even our incompetent politicians seemed to be working together and making some fairly sane choices. Maybe anything WAS possible!

Now I try to stay asleep for as long as I can bear it so there are less hours in the day to fill. Lockdown 2.0 is a different kettle of fish... there’s a general feeling of resentment at the people who did the wrong thing and let the virus loose on the rest of us. We are all starved of social contact and being able to see our loved ones. We are literally sitting at home watching our lives pass before our eyes with nothing to show for it. It’s not really living, to be honest. It’s only been a couple of weeks of this second lockdown and I’m struggling, as I said. It just feels so never-ending and joyless.

So, on my dog walks I try to find things that spark a bit of joy. Last week I saw a big glass pickle jar sitting on a brick fence... someone had filled it with water and the most beautiful banksias, which felt enormously kind. A generous giving of something beautiful to the world.

A few days ago the dog and I found a different street. (I used to walk the same route every day... no thought required, and it took me exactly an hour but the dog has rebelled and refuses to move if he doesn’t want to go in the direction I choose. The only way forward is a different walk every day, so he can’t predict the outcome. Who is the master? Certainly not me.)

Anyway, a different street. Score! As we moseyed on down this fresh and exciting path, a cat appeared, (often the source of a potential dislocated shoulder) but in this instance both the dog and I were taken by the moxie of the cat. Instead of suddenly making a desperate leap at it as he usually does, he stood politely while the cat came up and sniffed his nose. This cat happened to look EXACTLY like our cat, so possibly the dog was confused by that. They inspected each other with interest and the dog’s tail was twitching in a friendly way and this diplomatic meeting of traditional enemies, with dignity and calm, made me positively delirious with joy. I nearly had an elegant and glistening tear moment. But then the dog did an excited sideways leap and the cat fat-tailed it out of there post haste and we were back to situation normal. The dog and I continued on our way, tears of joy unshed.

Today, I woke up with a headache and a feeling of existential dread that is becoming all too familiar. The dog and I went on the old route... no thought required. I was listening to an excellent podcast with lots of big ideas being discussed, but I couldn’t concentrate over the roar of my own thoughts. As the dog criss-crossed in front of me for the two millionth time, I nearly tripped over and had a vision of myself falling onto the hard concrete and really hurting myself. I could feel the pain ripping through my ankle and knee and started thinking about what I’d do if it actually happened, and I realised I’d sit there and just give in to the tsunami of tears pressing at my eyelids. And it would be great! I could feel the relief of just giving in to it. I’d have a good reason to cry.

And suddenly, I had a physical memory of that exact feeling. I literally time travelled back to when I was 25 and the only time I have ever given in to utter despair. If you think utter despair only happens when everything you love is destroyed, the world is black and you can see no hope ahead, then you are right, but if you also think that this state can only be achieved through trauma, violence or war, then I’m here to disappoint. In my case it happened on a sunny day in Colorado on a ski slope.

To be fair, I’m a very bad skiier and I’d had a long day on the easy slopes. I was tired and ready to head back to the warmth of the cabin, but my brother convinced me to try one last run down a basic mogul run. ‘It’ll be fun!’ he said, as all brothers incorrectly assert at some point. By the time we got back up to the top of the mountain and found the correct ‘easy’ run, the sunny day had turned and it was looking dark and unpleasant. Experience had taught me that going down was a lot quicker than coming up, however, so I was undaunted. How bad could weather get in a fun five minute swoop down a mountain?

Ah, experience... what a trickster you are! Turns out that ‘mogul’ means ‘bumps’. My skiing expertise involved sliding down smooth runs with some small ability to change direction in slow swoops if forced to do so. Bumps turned out to be incompatible with my sliding skills... and at the end of a sunny day in Colorado, there were a LOT of bumps. Every single bump I hit had me face down in a pile of snow, and as the run was pretty much bubble wrap, it took me 15 minutes to get about 10 metres. By which time it was almost dark and snowing quite heavily.

My brother had effortlessly moguled off at the beginning and was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t see anyone else either, though I occasionally heard someone swoop past me. And more worryingly, I couldn’t even tell where the run was. All I could see was snow and bumps. I persevered for another 10 minutes, but I was getting more and more exhausted. Every time I stood up and tried to slide any distance I’d hit a bump and fall over. Which hurt, as the snow was hardpacked and icy by now. Getting up was hard work and I knew I was just going to fall over again in seconds. I realised I was chanting to myself a fun little ditty I’d made up: ‘I don’t like this. I’m not having fun. I don’t like this. I’m not having fun.’ It was really helping to keep me focused on how much fun I wasn’t having.

And then it happened. I fell over and I’d had enough. I gave in to utter despair. I just sat there in the snow and burst into tears. Messy, snotty, ugly tears. I was bawling. I may even have been still chanting my fun song through the tears. I vividly, viscerally remember that feeling of total surrender to despair. I just couldn’t keep myself going any longer and I didn’t care. I just wanted to sob until I froze to death.

And that’s where I’m heading now. Lockdown has me working so hard at getting over the bumps that I’m not sure how much longer I can keep myself going. I have learnt that singing ‘I don’t like this. I’m not having fun’ isn’t a good coping tool. I’ve heard that negative thinking makes it all worse, go figure. So I try to sing ‘We’re so lucky. We have each other. We are warm and safe. And lying on the couch watching Netflix is great!’ but it’s not as rousing as it sounds. And my brain knows it’s a trick. I’m secretly singing ‘I don’t like this. I’m not having fun.’ and I know it.

So, did I get myself off the mountain? No, I definitely did not. As I sat there sobbing, an ‘old’ lady (probably about 50, my age now) appeared out of the gloom with a stylish flick of her skis and asked me if I was okay. (If I was more like her, I’d have asked this question of the dead body... I’m not proud that I’m not more like her!) I, a deeply independent 25 year old human being hiccuped out that I had no idea where I was and that I didn’t like mogul runs AT ALL. After an unsuccessful attempt at training me to mogul, she kindly suggested that we cross country our way to the bottom, which she promised me was not far, and we proceed to zig zag our way across the slope for what seemed like about 12 hours, but which was in actual fact probably only about 10 minutes, and I was back in the land of the living. I’ve never felt so grateful to another human being for anything in my life. I pulled myself together, gave her a tearful hug and went and found my completely unconcerned brother whom I am yet to forgive for deserting me.

And now, in the time of Corona, that feeling of utter despair is on me again. And this time I can’t give in to it without seriously freaking out my children, worrying my family and disappointing myself. I need to find a way forward, over, around or through the bumps. I don’t think anyone is going to competently swoosh up with a flick of their skis and ask if I’m okay, this time, because everyone else is also dealing with the mogul run for the first time. None of us are good at this, because it’s new for all of us.

Lucky I have the dog to walk, small acts of generosity to enjoy and cats filled with moxie to admire.

And naming things has power, so hopefully now I know that it’s just utter despair, I can move on. I just hope the dog doesn’t trip me over, because I’m not sure I’d ever be able to stop crying.