Critic Cal

IF YOU’RE KILLED ON ZOOM YOU DIE HERE This is your body Breaking up At 50 megabits-per-second Straight to my front room A three-by-four of eyes and mouths Unanswerable sound I love you for an hour every day The pixels of our faces numbered We are better than a multiplex of data Gathered Each one to our own home On the night you were betrayed We took the slice and blessed it Everything is what you make of it A host of fragments un-assembled At our private suppers I have eagerly desired to be left alone Forgive me For I do not know what we are doing Carolyn Whitnall, 2020 The other day I requested a Zoom link that I never received. It was for a church thing. The common sense response would've been to ask again, over a different channel. But I was tired and lonely and sad and so I just skipped the session and chalked it up as the latest episode in the lengthy, rambling narrative of rejection that, when I'm tired and lonely and sad, feels like the en...

My lockdown fitness / coping regime keeps reminding me of a thing I once wrote, so I re-made it better and 'now'... STAY IN PLACE   and: hold. you’ve found the secret of eternity, your belly button pulling in towards your spine –  eyes fixing, face like flint, as seeming poised as you can seem to be, remembering to breathe.  remembering to – ( one ) you count the ringing in of ( two ) the evening news. whole empires  ( three ) decline and fall between each ( four ) recorded chime; tectonic ( five ) contractions, famine, wars and ( six )  the rumour of a vaccine. steady now. your hips are up a little; bring them in but do not let them  sag; and: breathe. the world in solemn stillness tries to hold its own together, separately.  so focus on the headlines; keep your head in line and inattentive to the quiver at your core;  ten seconds more – and: rest. you have until eternity tomorrow.  Carolyn Whitnall, 201...

In recent weeks, this poem (the first of an enthusiastic spate when I discovered roundels) has felt personally apt in new, weird ways. DIURNAL ROUND  Another day, another shock alarm; Another bracing of the body to obey, And of the face, to face with surface calm Another day.  Abolish every thought that goes astray, Deny yourself the luxury of qualm, Just exercise, and eat, and work, and pray.  You have a system, and it’s like a charm. And if you’re losing out to keep it, that’s OK; The time for all those other things will come Another day.  Carolyn Whitnall, 2018. Of all the people I know, I guess I’ve been one of the least hit by lockdown. Largely because of massive privilege. But also because I have been keeping life simple for some years now. My mental health has long needed careful managing. Or, at least, it feels like it needs careful managing still – who knows by this point? I’m generally too scared to test it. And some days I am am...

I recently heard it suggested that church should aspire to be like the butterfly: beautiful and carefree, our days of darkness and enshroudedness past, existing only to reproduce and to bring joy. A lovely image – and I’m sure it resonated with those who needed it. For me, though, it registered a little … partial. There is so much about my Christian journey – raw, real, difficult-but-hope-filled good stuff – that is not described by such an analogy: times of personal struggle and limitation (often, for me, in the form of depression and anxiety) in which my faith is no less real, and God is no less faithful; times of heartache as I learn to lament the brokenness of a world in which there's no getting away from the fact that new creation life is ‘not yet’ as well as ‘now’ . It’s also, if you stretch the metaphor, a little bleak – the existence of a butterfly is famously fleeting, while the Christian hope is of something altogether more enduring. As I pondered this, a different ...