Incubation Blues

Day 1 of the shutdown.

It is 5:27AM. It is eerily quiet — even for this hour. My bedroom is dark, and I have nowhere to go.

Yesterday, the last appointments and meetings canceled, and my calendar is blank. So is my brain.

The red, digital numbers on my alarm clock project needlessly onto the ceiling. I used to be proudly on time. Now both my schedule and I are beyond time. I have nowhere to go. Nowhere to be. Used-to-be has died.

The word “incubation” pops into my head.

Incubation is of course the time it takes for the virus from which we are all hiding, COVID-19, to start showing symptoms if it were to take up residence in our bodies (currently to believed to be 5.1 days on average).

But as I feel the weight of the duvet covering me, the cool early morning air tickling my nostrils, I remember another meaning of the word.

Incubation is also the act of withdrawing from the world in search for stillness and wisdom; withdrawing from daily life for periods of time in order to connect to the divine.

Ancient Greeks sought out holy places in the earth, dark caves, where they could be still for a longer period of time and learn to not act, not do, but simply listen and be.