The 2020 Easter Bunny
"The Snow Queen" illustration by Elena Ringo
from New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Second Collection. 1845
by Hans Christian Andersen
"Watch and maybe learn something new about yourself."

Easter morning brings an arctic cold front along Colorado's Affront Range. Snow starts falling well before the regularly scheduled and much-vaunted Red Rocks Easter Sunrise Service, which had been cancelled, anyway, as a part of The Governor's Coronavirus Pandemic Stay-At-Home Order. The sunrise itself seems to have been cancelled, replaced with a slowly increasing grayness seeping through sifting snowfall. The Muse rises long before any resurrection to start a batch of yeasty-sweet Hot Cross Buns. We display colored eggs in a transparent plastic tray on the kitchen table, no bunny willing to brave the swirling winds to hide them outside, where they'd just freeze and discolor the snow, anyway. Molly The Mardi Gras Mask-faced kitten and Max The Smutty-nosed Kitten sniff at the vase filled with small red tulips displayed atop the dining room table. This weather seems an affront to Easter, indeed, an affront to Spring, so we seem to be celebrating Affronting this Easter day. How to properly celebrate?

Some important something probably lurks here within this upside down, backwards and sideways holiday. A more delicate soul might not know what to do with this latest intrusion, but I've grown to expect, not the unexpected, but some fresh Affronting whenever encountering anything, everything. Between seemingly endless Executive Orders and each citizen's unique interpretations, imprecations abound: every entrance blocked, each exit barricaded, every roadway almost empty but heading nowhere now. How could anyone cope? Some days, hope itself seems as if it has been subcontracted out to one of our President's inevitably inept cronies who entered the business for the money rather than to provide any genuine service. We've experienced a Do It Yourself Spring so far, seemingly dependent upon each newly independent actor to make it whatever they might, with no respite in clear sight yet.

The Muse broke down and cleaned The Villa yesterday. I knew enough to pretty much stay out of the way. I'd caught that curious gleam that sometimes overtakes her eyes, a mission driven by some fierce internal condition willing and perfectly able to run roughshod over anything and everything getting in her way. I found a few errands to run and graciously volunteered to vacuum after she'd finished raising dust, though she felt that she simply had to vacuum beneath and behind before merely cleaning around, so I was left with mopping and trying to prize out two kitten's-worth of fur which overfilled the machine by the time she was done. Easter might be suspended this year, but Spring cleaning continues with perhaps greater than usual urgency.

What does one do when one does not know what to do? One usually does just what one always does when suddenly struck clueless. One engages in perhaps the most self-disclosing behavior possible. Neither cleverly planned nor particularly volitional, one runs the old default program perhaps most representative of the most authentic self. Ordinarily, in Ordinary Times and particularly in Festal Times, rhythms and rhymes easily induce themselves by taking cues from what one feels compelled to do by the context within which they find themselves. Disrupted, these patterns fail to automatically replicate, leaving glaring openings for some greater, more original resonance. Can't hide eggs in the yard? What replacement could possibly emerge? Nobody knows yet. An increased potential for surprising and delighting might emerge, but however one responds without clearly knowing will likely end up showing something about a you perhaps rarely glimpsed, a back-handed and unintended form of self-enlightenment.

Let us be grateful for the latest Affronting now confronting us. Sing praise for whatever the current shortcoming seems to induce, for it might hold more truth than any regular, well-practiced and thoroughly anticipated ritual. Some, myself prominently included, first just feel pissed off at the suspension of expected relief. I notice the holes before I catch any holiness there. I remain who I am, as you remain who you are, too, even beneath these seemingly endless intrusions. What we do then will deeply influence the quality of our adventure and its resulting story, but this requires a slight shift of attention away from what we're supposed to do toward attending to what we actually do, for what we do when we don't have a clue what to do says the most about you.

Maybe you'll find that you'd really rather not associate with the kind of person you become then: angry, begrudging, forlorn. Maybe within that experience of disappointing yourself in response to some disorienting new Affront, you'll identify potential for further improvement. Maybe that acknowledgement might render you a tad more mindful next time you're struck clueless, and thereby open up previously inaccessible choices, but only if you can catch yourself clueless. Maybe the real you always wanted to do better but never identified the wrinkle to meaningfully intervene. Watch what you do when confronting the latest Affronting and you might discover just what you do.

Our habits and routines make our execution seem more flawless than it might otherwise appear. It's relatively easy to stick with any straight and narrow when every challenge emerges just as expected. We've all been disrupted now. Whether we first fall together or fall apart might not matter nearly as much as what we choose to do next. What do you do after you noticed that you didn't know what to do? Watch and maybe learn something new about yourself.

©2020 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #WhatNow?, #PureSchmaltz