Petrichor

When new rain falls, it smells of mud suspended in the air, or wet rocks. If you’re lucky, the rain will fall on you when you are alone in a quiet place so you can hear it and smell it.

There is a hope that we must speak about carefully, that the way the world will change because of this pandemic will be somehow healing. We have to be careful, because we don’t want to associate death and the collateral damage of a stopped economy with a benefit. I want the planet to heal, but I don’t want to imply that humans deserve the suffering that we will be enduring for some time, and I certainly don’t want to imply in any way that this is the wrath of God or some other punishment for our bad behavior. Ideally, we would be able to take the necessary actions to mitigate climate change without a devastating pandemic.

But no one can deny that at least in Europe and North American, we have been living in an orgy of petroleum-based consumerism. And that has promoted the fastest period of environmental destruction since the meteor killed the dinosaurs. We have bought and thrown away and bought again. We have believed that a new lipstick, or a new handbag, or a new car would bring us joy. We have filled the oceans with plastic and the air with carbon. The planet is hot and dirty.

I think it’s O.K. to rest in this pause and re-imagine what value means. Or maybe abandon the need for value to motivate us. In yoga we practice the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind through the breath and the exhalation. I feel like we are all, at the same time exhaling together. Of course we are afraid. Of course everything is different. Of course it happened so quickly. Of course I do not have the perspective of an ER doctor in Queens, or of someone waiting in terror for a call from the hospital. I just have my quiet house and my cats, and my daily walks in the April weather. I have my own fear of dying which I have had for two and a half years now. This virus is a new threat, and more immediate right now than the old one. I have had this stillness now for three weeks with all of you. This long, long exhalation that has quieted the relentless fluctuations of buying and eating and rushing to work. Without wanting people and animals to suffer, I do wish for there to be lasting good when the suffering is over. I hope that we can hold onto what is positive and resist enriching the upper classes at the expense of the earth and ourselves due to our buying into the belief that the pursuit of happiness is the same as the pursuit of stuff.

In your life, today, you can do something useful and careful. Perhaps you are already cooking more. Maybe you’ve started some seeds. We might not have farmers markets this year, so gardening could be a new hobby. If you have a bit of dirt somewhere, you can grow a plant. I used to grow tomatoes in my Manhattan apartment in five gallon plastic buckets and potting soil. Maybe you have decided to mend your jeans rather than toss them. We could start a new trend of fashionable clothing repairs and revive hand sewing.

I don’t have a cocktail recipe today, but if I could tell you where to find the flavor of petrichor, it would be in a dry Alsatian reisling. If you have access to a store that sells wine right now, get this wine, chill it and drink it with some blue cheese. It will taste like rain.