14.03.2020 | Pandemic COVID-19: a Journal of Resilience

While the COVID-19 pandemic expands, its awareness in the US overcomes the months-long denial. Finally extremely serious concerns prevails on financial interests. Yet the fine line between awareness and panic is often crossed. Irrational fears take over the necessary precautions and measures: panic shopping and toilet paper shortage are some of examples. If dealing with a pandemic related to respiratory illness may promote shopping of masks and sanitizers, it is puzzling the insane rushing to purchase toilet paper: on the bright side, at least in the US we have not witnessed yet related robberies.

My mailbox is flooded with cancellations of events including closure of main cultural and art venues. My social life heavily has been relying on NewYork cultural life as a single woman, recently divorced, and still dealing with PTSD caused by bullying and abuse. But I am also daily performing meditative practices developing resilience to the multitude of stressors and challenges I have faced in the past five years.

In the dystopian time, mindfulness and mindful movement, is more than ever essential to well-being. In the effort of acceptance of this new totally unexpected world order I decided to share my journal, which I started in 2014, as a means of emotional survival. I called it "journal of daily survival"; every day I record even a simple small action to transform a negative thought or emotion into a positive creative endeavor. With the coronavirus the effort is in transforming social distancing into spatial awareness. Today I have been revaluing outdoor activities, returned to power walking in my moving meditations in Riverside park. It is a beautiful mild sunny day, spring is approaching. My destination is the tennis courts at 120 Street; but it does not matter if will be able to find a court, I am just enjoying every moment of my walk, here and now, looking at the shimmering light reflected by the Hudson river. I forget about the pandemic.

Today a friend forwarded a post quite popular in Italy:

"L' Italia è come quella tipa che ha più talento di tutti, è come quella che le altre se le mangia, perché è nata bella, più bella di tutte e le altre se le asfalta. L' Italia è come quella più ingegnosa, che ha le mani di una fata, che si inventa mille cose, perché è piena di risorse. Sa discutere di storia, di mare, di montagne, sa di cibo, di buon vino, di dialetti, di pittori, di scultori, di scrittori, di eccellenze nella scienza, non c'è niente che non sa. E quando questa tipa bella e talentuosa inciampa e cade, la platea delle sfigate esulta. È la rabbia delle poverine ingelosite, quelle al buio, perché lei è comunque bella anche quando cade a terra. Ma l'Italia è una tipa con stivale tacco 12, ovviamente made in Italy, che nessuna sa portare meglio di lei... solo il tempo di rialzarsi.”

Mindfulness as Survival Means | "Finding the Axis Mundi" on My Birthday

Article 15 of New York Human Rights Law of the Executive Law (chapter 18 of the Consolidated Laws of New York) prohibits "discrimination on the basis of "age, race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, military status, sex, marital status or disability" and 'under the Human Rights Law in New York, every citizen has an “equal opportunity to enjoy a full and productive life.” Since 2014 my "opportunity to enjoy a full and productive life.” has been denied by many parties. While I was undergoing traumatic divorce proceedings I was subjected to prejudicial treatment, harassment and abuse of power by the co-op board of an Upper West Side building where I have been a resident and shareholder since 1989.
    Perhaps my personal story is an autoethonography which also can be contextualized in gentrification: NYC neighborhoods have been transformed in the past decades, but the increase of real estate value is proportional to the decrease of community values.
   My divorce case is somehow similar to a multitude of cases.   Families are destroyed by the greed of attorneys and anybody else involved in the "divorce industry": the main victims are the parties with economical and social disadvantage. The lack of assistance from agencies who are supposed to support victims of domestic abuse aggrevates the situation. For years I have been trying unsuccessfully to get legal assistance from the NYC Center for Family Justice. My case involved mental cruelty, emotional abuse and financial control—which are recognized as domestic abuse—but I was never provided any legal support or counseling. I was referred to private legal practices who would not even consider my case since did not involve physical violence.
   Due to such course of events, this year celebration of my birthday in New York was extremely difficult.  I am a middle-class, middle-age intellectual and seem to have become a scapegoat for everybody's anger and frustration.  As a designer/artist and yoga practitioner I resort to creativity, a healthy lifestyle and meditation as means of survival. A yoga practice at sunset by the Hudson River reminded how the beauty of nature and the urban energy can help to overcome my immediate social context.
   A movement practice in a urban space is a way to a collective healing, bringing a personal expression to a public statement, I do not believe my story is isolated and am trying to make it public. I hope that sharing with others the abuse and bullying I have been subjected to, will help not only as narrative for the healing process, but also for public change.
    Quoting Audre Lorde,  “My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.”