Quarantine Quaker
By Nick Barnette
The therapist suggests a “centering practice.”
I want to tell her, “You know those carnival rides where you stand against a wall and the contraption starts spinning and presses you against a wall? That’s my year. If I try getting to the center, I’ll break a collarbone or shatter some teeth.”
I don’t say this. I echo back the importance of “centering” and make a vague promise to download a meditation app or something. It’s so much easier to lie to a therapist when sessions are over the phone.
I hang up and am still in a carnival spin, a thrill ride fueled by the litany of global crises corporate and university emails keep reminding me of, but also by the personal challenges this year has thrown at me.
Losing a beloved pet.
Losing a grandparent.
Caretaking for a terminally ill parent.
I’m no physicist, but my torque is off the charts.
***
I am tired of the well-intentioned command: “remember to take care of yourself.” I can only watch The Birdcage or The Princess Diaries so many times. I am tired of commands in general. I am tired of commands, but it is also ingrained in me–being raised by the do-gooder, double whammy of a teacher and preacher–to be a star student. That’s why I set the goal, with only a few days until my next counseling session, to complete my therapy homework of finding a “centering practice” that works for me.
I still can’t give you a definition of “centered,” but I have a general idea of what it looks like.
Only Time by Enya.
People dancing in jewel tones at the end of a Celebrex commercial.
That meme of Lindsay Lohan meditating in an infinity pool in Thailand.
Those are the final products of applying the ten thousand hour rule to the sport of centering.
I try remembering times when I have felt this lightness. The first time I think of, it happened at another crossroads.
I was a year out of college and underemployed when I moved back into my parent’s house in suburban Alabama. With most of my high school friends in new cities, I spent most of my free time reading or looking for excuses to get out of the house.
I first learned about Quaker meetings–or waiting worship–from the Jeffrey Eugenides novel The Marriage Plot, the most liberal arts alum way possible to discover a new religion. Eugenides’s descriptions of the non-hierarchical and mostly silent gatherings were too mystical to resist. Also, it was free entertainment and an excuse to get out of the house.
Having watched Wild, Wild Country, I skimmed the Wikipedia page on Quakers to make sure I wouldn’t be recruited into handing out flowers at airports or asked to plunge my hand into a tank of rattlesnakes. What I found out was promising. A central belief of Quakers, of whom there are theist and nontheist groups, is that every human holds light and goodness, so there is no need for a church authority. Authority in general is bucked against, as Quakers have historically advocated for abolition of slavery, prisons, and war. I vibed with all of this. The whole deal about not drinking alcohol was less fun to me, but I wasn’t looking to convert. I planned to be a tourist to a new way of spending a Sunday afternoon.
I discovered a weekly Quaker meeting around the corner. The group met in a 19th century farmhouse— a white and sloping down, humid-slick knoll of a backyard. I didn’t know what to expect when I opened the door, maybe some oatmeal mascot doppelgangers mixed with boomer hippies braiding flowers into their hair. The latter guess wasn’t totally off.
I milled around a tin of bran muffins and paper cups full of Folgers, making small talk with the dozen or so other attendees before we flowed into the front room. On old, wood chairs on an old, wood floor, we sat in a circle. There was no bang of a start gun for silence; the silence just happened. In waiting worship, the Quakers, also known as Friends, spend most of the time sitting quietly, but if anyone feels led to share, they can.
One woman asked that we think of her brother who had been in a cycling accident that morning; another woman told us she was excited about her daughter, an out-of-state college student, coming home to visit next weekend.
That first meeting, I thought of nothing, shared nothing. An hour of nothing. It was lovely.
I went a few other Sundays, but my time as a tourist in Quakerland was over. The brunch menu at the restaurant where I served started offering bottomless mimosas and the wait staff all hit paydirt. I snatched up every boozy shift possible.
***
I have attended virtual baby showers, concerts, happy hours, trivia nights, and Passovers this year, so I assume there has to be a virtual Quaker meeting. I am right.
Zoom fatigue is real. I spend six hours of my week in Zoom classes where I listen to people try to sound smarter than the last. I have learned I have no poker face or patience for men’s egos. This online Quaker meeting, however, is an anti-Zoom meeting. There is no syllabus, required reading, or pontificating.
There are around 15 people in the meeting, and, for the first several minutes, no one speaks. A woman breaks the silence about 10 minutes into the meeting to let us know that we can unmute if we ever would like to share or we can share in the chat feature if that’s preferable.
Silence again.
A sweatered woman reads a book. A man in a fluorescent office either meditates or falls asleep.
My apartment sits just off the Las Vegas Strip, a wonder so bright it shines purple and yellow all the way up to the International Space Station. Party buses thump below, along with your average Vegas speedster. From my window, I can see the fairgrounds where this time last year I was at the Intersect Music Festival, yee-hawing to Kacey Musgraves and soft-crying to Brandi Carlile. The fairgrounds have been quiet since March, but the traffic and lights have never really stopped.
In March, I had expected the quarantine to be quiet and slow. I was wrong. My eyes and fingers are in constant motion.
Beyond the city soundscape, I have been refreshing Twitter minute by minute, searching for something new to binge, and going back to Twitter when what I’m binging loses my interest. I’ve never had more time to write and research and take full advantage of the fruits of the Information Age.
In the unagendaed Zoom meeting, I feel—for the first time, maybe, ever—the liberation of only having one tab open. I have never sat, laptop open, with the sole purpose of doing or consuming nothing.
We are silent for 40 more minutes, then one attendee unmutes and asks us to “hold in the light” those without homes. She lives in Illinois, and police officers in her city had recently stolen and trashed items from a homeless encampment.
No one speaks for another 10 minutes and the host unmutes to let us know the meeting is over.
At no moment does my spin magically stop. I still carry all the anger and sadness this year has unsurfaced in me. The spin never stops, but the meeting makes it seem more like a dance than a thrill ride.
Traditionally, Quaker meetings end with two members rising and shaking hands. I do not know when I’ll feel safe enough to shake a stranger’s hand again. For now, I am fine with simply clicking a button.
Photo/Nick Barnette.
Nick Barnette is an MFA Creative Writing student at the University of Las Vegas. Nevada. Prior to his MFA, Nick served as a Fulbright Fellow in Athens, Greece.
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