The Choreography of Ruin

In Ellen Bass’ poem, Saturn’s Rings, there is this beautiful line about the choreography of ruin. According to Bass, the world breaks like glass under a microscope. “It doesn’t crack all at once,” she tells us “but spreads out from the damaged cavities.”

I love this line.

She packs so much meaning into one unpretentious sentence.

I’ve thought a lot about the choreography of ruin a lot over the last year. Every day on the news we watch our society fracture, always along predictable fault lines. And every day we bear witness to the disproportionate suffering the pandemic has inflicted upon the most marginalized people in our communities. Watching all this unfold in real time, I’m struck by the universality of Bass’ description of ruin.

I think her words also apply to the slow deterioration of mental health through these trying times.

Thankfully, many of you reading this are standing at the tail end of pandemic living. But, here in Ontario, we are deep in the throws of our 3rd wave with the province in full lockdown. There is no clear leadership; no clear timeline for getting anybody vaccinated; no foreseeable end to the state of stress and isolation and fatigue that we’ve been stuck in for more than a year now.

And, when I find my resolve cracking from time to time, I notice that it breaks like glass under a microscope: not all at once, but spreading out from the damaged cavities, the weak points. I’m sure this manifests differently for everyone. For me, it means anxiety, catastrophic thinking, clenched jaw and restless sleep. Day-to-day living is made up of these small social interactions–small talk with the neighbours, pleasantries with the cashier, nameless conversations with other parents at the park. These are things I’ve never been good at, things I’ve always marvelled about how some people seem to achieve effortlessly. Increasingly, these inconsequential things feel almost intolerable.

In her poem, Bass meditates on the choreography of ruin with striking visual imagery: cows ankle deep in shit, a man bathed in the blue glow of a television set with a gun pressed against the roof of his mouth.

“Don’t forget the poles of the earth are turning to slush,” she tell us.

When the ICU beds fill up someone has to decide who gets taken off their ventilator. According to what calculus, I do not know. On the news, we’re encouraged to think about all this in the language of personal responsibility. It’s best not to ask about systems, we’re told. It’s best not to ask why vaccinations are taking so long, why there were so few ICU beds in the first place.

“Don’t forget the turtles burning in the Gulf,” Bass tells us.

The month before the pandemic they were slashing health care and telling us the doctors are overpaid, but it’s best not to ask about that. In the ICU they have tablets with zoom enabled for teleconferenced last goodbyes.

“Still for a moment it all recedes.

The backyard potatoes swell quietly

buried beneath their canopy of leaves.

The wind rubs its hands through the trees.”