Random Thoughts

A FEW WORDS from my cocoon

Maryalicia Post reflects on an unenviable position - that of a travel writer confined to her home

Iread the other day of a travel writer turning his travel photos into jigsaw puzzles – not a bad metaphor for the times we are going through. ‘Normally’ at this time I’d be getting ready to head for Barcelona to preview next year’s ESCRS meeting, but COVID-19 and ‘cocooning’ has made us all think again about ‘normal’.

For eye surgeons the challenge is multifaceted as they adjust to ‘virtual meetings’ such as the one taking the place of the Amsterdam Congress; for a cocooned travel writer. the most obvious dilemma is finding other ways of getting through until it’s safe to pack the travel bag and head for the airport.

Here in Dublin, following the Irish Government’s guidelines, I’m ‘cocooning’. The term was invented in the 1980s by USA trend-spotter Faith Popcorn. Ms Popcorn (she legally changed her name from Plotkin) is and was considered the Nostradamus of marketing. Among her brain storms, she advised Coca-Cola to bottle water and Kodak to move to digital printing. As for ‘cocooning’, she defined it as “the impulse to stay inside, turning the home into a nest, when the outside is tough and scary”.

She didn’t, as far as I know, predict COVID-19 or foresee cocooning as a strategy for defeating it, but here it is and here we are. Or at least here I am, cocooning, as we ‘seniors’ have been advised to do.

As a writer, I don’t have a problem filling in the time. I used the early days to organise a new book of poetry, which was published last month (Sky Full of Clouds). I don’t find lockdown/cocooning all bad, either. For me, the most positive feature of cocooning is the silence. There are no planes flying in to land at nearby Dublin airport, no traffic noises on the lane where I live. I can hear the birds – It’s been so long since I’ve heard them, I’d almost forgotten they exist. And they certainly do exist, in greater numbers for some reason. Or maybe I just have more time to notice them.

If silence is the best feature, paradoxically it is also the worst. I miss hearing the doorbell announce a friend just stopping in for coffee and a chat. I miss the chat too. But my circle of friends keeps in touch by phone, text and email. And it’s not as if this is going to last forever. It’s not unrealistic to expect that at this time next year we’ll be back to our familiar schedules.

We’re at a point now where we can consider what we will do when the lid comes off; the chrysalis is cracking and we butterflies will soon emerge. Will it be a dinner in a good restaurant, a shopping spree or just coffee at a cafe table? In many ways, the end of cocooning will seem like New Year’s Eve: a time for celebrating the end of the old; the start of the new – reflecting on ‘auld lang syne’; and making resolutions. Among them may well be new ways to protect health at work, when travelling and at home. Appreciating what we have while we have it will surely be another.

Unexpectedly, I’ve enjoyed these last few weeks within my own walls and I’m not pushed to leave them. I expect, however, that at the first overhead roar of an airplane I’ll be hauling out my rolly bag and booking a ticket to Barcelona with the 39th ESCRS meeting in mind. See you there.