This Lent, I decided to drink nothing but water. I'd fallen into a practice of having a daily Pepsi or Coke, when I couldn't find Pepsi, and nightly cognac. I've switched to diet Pepsi to cut sugar, and I haven't been getting schnockered from the cognac, but I don't want this to become a thoughtless habit. there's been a bit of cheating, but I'm doing all right.
I've also been enjoying daily Lenten readings every morning with my mother. The first Friday of Lent, it suggested a fast. I decided that, since it wasn't too late (I hadn't had breakfast), I'd fast that day. I almost made it to sunset. (I was getting addle-minded and a little weak, so I had some simple Russian brown bread, with butter. Then some raisins. Then some M&Ms.) The next Friday I did better; I made it to official sunset. In order to keep myself occupied without expending too much energy, I've been doing everything very slowly on Fridays. This has been a surprisingly pleasing, mindful experience. The first Friday, I ran errands. Usually when I walk, I look ahead at the lights. If it looks like it's getting ready to change, I alter my pace so I can avoid standing and waiting to cross the street. It's been quite cold here, often around 20 below, and you can often stand at a light for 90 seconds. But that day I didn't rush. I just experienced the cold, looked around and lived it, appreciating that I wasn't cooped up indoors. The second Friday, I took a two-hour walk along the Iset river. I made sure to walk away from home slowly, so I'd have a nice long walk. I emerged from an underpass tunnel and saw this:
The Sevastyanov House in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
There are birch trees along the Iset across from the Sevastyanov House, the patterns of which remind me of a harlequin in black and white. (So many of these pictures look like I took them in black and white, but I didn't.)
A view of the Iset through a wrought-iron railing on an overpass.
These beautiful ice crystals form on the water all along the banks of the river. Here's a closeup:
They remind me of decorations on a cake.
I sneaked across the frozen river. It's not allowed, but plenty of people have made a nice trail, so I took my chances. Like sand dunes, you can find plenty of pictures of nature's artwork, but somehow it never gets too dull.
There are small parks along the Iset, and some spillways. Not exactly waterfalls, but I cn pretend. There are nice signs of life along the river: fishermen, ducks, beautiful pigeons that are camouflaged white with gray and black splotches:
And art:
Snow in any language means fun.
The mindfulness on Fridays has calmed me. I did laundry and, as I carried it upstairs from the dryer, thought with each step how one task was completed. We had clean sheets and towels to go into the weekend with and we'd both feel better to have more clean clothes to choose from. I perform more self-care regimens on Fridays to give my body the attention it's not getting through food. I've continued working on a writing I began a year or so ago about what I thought Jesus might have experienced and thought when He went into the wilderness alone for those weeks. That gives me a reason to feel the hunger rather than ignore it.
In one of my bloglettes early in the pandemic, I wrote of experiencing the isolation and limitations of the pandemic. I wrote of some of the freedoms that could come of it. This might sound random, but stay with me. I've had two very minor surgeries in the past month and a half. What looked like a large pimple on the back of my wrist wouldn't go away, so I had it excised, twice. The first time by a dermatologist who assured me is wasn't cancerous. The second time by a plastic surgeon after it was biopsied and determined to, indeed, be cancerous. The dermatologist kept turning my head away with her hand so I couldn't see her working. I told her, as best I could in Russian, that as long as she held a scalpel in one hand and my arm in the other, I was going to watch. The plastic surgeon didn't care that I watched. He even got a pillow for me so I could better see him slice the surrounding area, pull it back with a long tweezers and alternately snip and cauterize the tissue beneath until it was removed. I've long hated injections, but living in all these countries requires that I keep up-to-date on recommended vaccinations. I've discovered that they hurt less if I watch. Watching this procedure was so fascinating that I was more comfortable than I would have been looking at a sterile wall saying la-la-de-da I'm in my happy place to myself, while imagining what was going on.
So, I'm slowing down during my Friday fasts, even focusing on them, and, like watching the needle go in and studying the snipping and cauterizing, it makes it less uncomfortable, gives it an element of interest, even fascination. Sometimes I worry that after the pandemic is over and we can all go out and be together again, everything I can do now (all the self-care, taking walks, exercising, reading, practicing recorders) will remind me of the pandemic isolation. I hope not. Perhaps all this practice on mindful focusing will help when that time comes. Perhaps it will prove to be preventive.
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