To kickstart our mornings, we love a cuppa coffee (or a turmeric drink, as I'm abstaining to keep my nervous system on keel) with coconut milk. It's the only milk we drink, and we buy it by the box of twelve. Living rurally, whenever I see it on special I buy three boxes, to save those needless trips into town. The new 'normal' doesn't allow for that - it's two per customer only. With the new COVID cases in Melbourne, people are panic buying again, so limits on pasta and milk are the normal. It seems ridiculous when there's no limits on other food. Last week's shop was an event. I felt anxious even being in the supermarket - not because of COVID, but because of all the rules you're meant to follow, and how abnormal the situation is. As if to punctuate it, a guy was walking through the dairy section - where half the shelves were empty - shouting.

'Do you believe your government? No. Do you believe the media? No. There's plenty of food in the warehouses - they just don't have the staff to get it out!'. I suppose he felt the need to tell people to stop panic buying, but it made little sense. Why were just the perishables aisles empty and the other shelves not? There was plenty of tinned vegetables, and bags of rice, flour and noodles. We had no trouble buying most of what we needed. I walked in and out five times to make five separate purchases of coconut milk in five different aisles, and a friend I saw there bought two more for me. She messaged me yesterday to say the milk had all gone. Was this just people buying in twos, like me? What the hell is going on?

The new normal seems to be about uncertainty more than anything.

I don't know anymore either whether it's legitimate. How on earth can we be heading for food shortages in a country as big and economically stable as ours? How can we be panic buying over a few cases of COVID in Melbourne when the US and Brazil have far more cases? As England opens up their borders and allows mutual travel between many countries in Europe, Australians can't even cross the border into Queensland or Western Australia. I give up watching the news because it is changing so much from day to day that I feel I get anxious over situations that haven't happened yet, and might not happen, only to be told a different story the following day. The new normal, it seems, is to not know what the fuck is going on ever.

Point Addis beach - waves, at least, are consistant and unbounded.

And that's okay.

It's not normal for us to believe in the myth of stablity.

Impermanence in all things is a law of the universe. We live, we die. Cells divide. The ground is never stable under our feet.

Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. We just believed it could - now, we reel in shock as we anticipate economic collapse and all that comes with it, though we've known for a long time it was coming, but in a future far, far away.

So we're all reassessing this 'new normal' - instability, chaos, constantly changing rules, boundaries, increased surveillance and laws allowing it passed quickly and often cruelly that affect minority groups over the more socially mobile, higher unemployment, and the rest.

I contemplate my privilege. I am grateful, but uncomfortable. I have abundance, whereas others do not. I should be happy, but my heart hurts for those who are just surviving. It's a pain that comes from anger and frustration that sits as depression in my chest. My acupuncturist (oh - the privilege of being able to afford alternative health care!) helps me clarify what part of me knew - the trauma I'm feeling in my body is triggered by these feelings of entrapment and limited freedoms, and a deep sense of injustice - it's exactly how I felt in a past trauma and that's why I'm feeling the way I do now. She places needles in a way that she can assist my body move these sensations on through. The liver doesn't do well with anger.

At home, in the illusion of stablity we've created on this five acre block, I sit and meditate and do pranyama. A lot. I'm processing, a lot. We all are.

The bottom line is that I'm not that affected by this crisis. I have a secure job to go back to next year. There's no point in me focussing on anything but the now. Because if I'm focussing too much on the future, how can I do good right now? And what good can I do right now within my own energetic fields that maintain this life that I want - to be part of a loving world that considers it's impact on the earth so that we don't contribute more to it's demise?

And so, I do what many would want to do - I tend the land. Property prices are already going up in rural areas. A 5 acre block sold in town for $475,000 - ten years ago, they sold for $90,000. Now that people can work from home, they're realising that being in a city isn't the best idea in a pandemic. They're seeing what we've seen for years and years - that having a bit of self sufficiency has a lot of value. I wish everyone could afford to live rurally. I wish we could host people on our land (we're looking into this possibility - we have a bus we can use as accomodation, but we need an outside toilet or bathroom) to help out and at the same time give them a sanctuary. That seed is beginning to crack in my mind too.

Within two weeks of coming home we've built a bigger chicken coop - more eggs, potential meat in desperate times (though I won't unless we're desperate), and more manure to feed back into the garden system. It's winter here so it's easy to work. We've marked out a new garden or extended garden for the food forest and ordered more heirloom seeds and some fruit trees. I've turned over the compost and marked out a new bin to begin more. I've installed two more wicking beds, though I still have to find some gravel for them and the soil won't be ready til late Spring. Out here, under the sky, with my hands in the dirt, it feels like I'm doing something to secure our future. And if we have abundance - if we've created this abundance, manifest it - then we can share with community should the need arise again. When the need arises again.

Or, there will be drought, or flood, or a locust plague, or we'll get sick and can't tend the land and have to move, or a parent will die, or a fire, or any of a number of things that are part of the infinite possibles of the future, just as much as good things are, like an abundant garden shared with an abundant community in a more awake world.

Thus, the ground still shakes under my feet. And that's okay. I feel my cells vibrating. The subtle body knows nothing is permanent. Nothing. From moment to moment, everything changes. All we can do is go with the flow the best we can.

This response is to Abundance Tribe's QOTW - What is Your "Understanding Of The New Normal"? How is it going to affect your life and what measures if any are you going to put in place to help you maintain the life that you want?. Anyone can answer - please do. How is YOUR new normal?

With Love,

https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmcGSZxvsXD8YbSCNAo6KWc4a9RjXyRCjWupZdPXJapkXk

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