My loop has been reset.  Weekdays.  Work and Back.  No more.

 

School has closed, which for the foreseeable future has contracted my loops.  From bed to the backyard to water the plants and do a little yoga.  Maybe if I’m ambitious, it’s run down the greenway and back.  Then, clean up, hit the kitchen for breakfast, and in front of a computer in one of the rooms in the house where class is held.

 

I’ve gotten used to this more recently, but the first week was the hardest.  Loops are habits we construct one choice at a time, over and over and over.  We may believe they constitute our reality, but something may come along–say a global pandemic, for instance–and change the motion of our loop, and we are forced to change as a result.

 

That change can be daunting, overwhelming, and in cases where conditions for survival deteriorate, downright maddening.  In comparison, my consternation to become an online educator seems puny.  And I am truly grateful for the resources I have, even if it means a slight discomfort.

 

But still, at the end of week one, the abrupt shift and the daily shifts in directives had me frayed at the wit’s end of my tether.  Luckily, the weekend was beautiful, and public access points on the river were still open, so I called up some homies to see if they wanted to throw a kayak in the water for the afternoon.

For a while, at least, nature held that beautiful illusion that the world of civilization, what Hannah Arendt referred to as the artificial world of mankind, wasn’t the bugaboo it had seemed all week.  After all on a sunny day with gentle, shimmering waters, what could all that matter?  And of course, as often happens, removed from the artificial world and the immediate stress of figuring things out, removed from the computer screen, removed from the hundreds of emails and daily contradictory directives, the mind opens up and sees solutions in that artificial world that it never could have while immersed in it.  Step back and don’t look so close, and you start to see the potential new paths, new connections, new loops.

 

My loop started with a trip around the edge of the pond, a medium-sized cove off the south bank of the river. Placid.  Closed off from the river’s current.  It’s named after ducks, but other birds dominate the landscape.  From time to time, v-formations of geese squaw overhead.  Small finches flit.  But the hawks are the best.  Their nests sit high in the electrical towers that traverse the water.  

 

Once around the perimeter, I lean back to get some of the sun I’ve missed while plugging away at my keyboard.  A gracious hawk swoops down.  Flapping its wings forward, it holds position mid-air, much like I might tread water.  Watching, watching.  It breaks, a forty-five degree angle toward the water.  Then, maybe ten feet above the surface, it breaks its flight pattern, glides parallel to the surface, loops around in maybe a circle of a hundred feet or so, and finds the exact same spot where it tread the air moments before.

 

Over and over, the hawk repeats its loop.  I barely know I’m watching it, still on the surface of the water, lost in the constant motion.  Then, just when I’ve been lulled into this trance, it dives one more time.  But instead of the pull up, the hawk accelerates, faster, faster, pell mell to the water’s surface.  Splash!  Breaks the surface, and just as quickly re-emerges.  It has broken that loop, returning back to its high nest with a fish grasped in its talons.  Higher and higher, it disappears into the afternoon sun.

 

The moment, the exhilaration, awakens me.  I remember myself in the boat.  How long have I been here, lost in the loops of the hawk?

 

My friends have paddled around, and it seems it’s a reasonable time to make way back to the civilized world.  So, I batten down the hatches and make my way back toward the currents.  But before veering right and back into the river, I see a heron standing serenely on the bank to the left.  I know I must return to the river and ultimately loop back home, but I wish to see the bird closely.  Closer, closer I paddle, until–inevitably–the bird opens its majestic wing span, makes two or three thunderous pumps and moves into a long, slow glide over my head and out of my field of vision.  They never let you get too close, waiting, waiting until just the right time to launch.  I found my satisfaction and turn the craft around, back out of the embankment, back around to the inlet that will lead me to the river.  

 

I reach the turn and bank left.  Just as my vision points north again, a hear a flutter behind my right ear.  I turn to see the heron landing.  It had just made a long, slow loop across the pond and stealthily landed where it could keep an eye on me as I leave his home and head back to mine.

 

Inevitably as I return home, back to my computer, to build this new set of habits that is my life teaching from home, I will form new patterns, new loops.  From time to time, I’m glad I can remember that there other loops out there, and that trying new ones from time to time will allow me to see the one I’m in from the birds’ eye view that can lend so much clarity.

h/t to the philosophy of Douglas Hofstatter