Episode 01: Meehan, Musings, Meditations, and Marcel
“He's been such a good little friend. It's interesting, sometimes I'm thinking, why have I got this creature? Because the other cats in the neighbourhood entertain me. But it's such a nice thing to have an animal. If you can, if you're not allergic to it and you're able to care for it.” Olivia is talking about her kitten, whom she has named after a French artist.
“It is true even though it's a bit crazy. Most people don't get that, but it took a long time to decide on the name because it wasn't just me who had to agree with the name and my partner's main concern was what name could they bear hearing called out all the time. So, it's going to be a name that you feel comfortable hearing because I do talk to him a bit, but he's good.” She pets Marcel adoringly and puts him back on the couch he was napping at.
Portrait of Marcel (2020). Credits: Olivia Meehan.
For a house that's full of books and artworks, how is it living with a cat? I want to know.
“It's good. He likes to read every now and then, French and English. But there hasn’t actually been any accident with any artwork or books. A few books fell down at one point because he climbed up on the bookshelf, but he hasn't done that since.”
As long as he isn’t eating the books alive, Marcel sounds like a good companion.
“He's a bit of a Teddy bear, so he doesn't... He's not a destructive cat. I did my research. He hasn't ruined anything. I think the toilet paper, we can't leave that out. It has to be sort of hidden because he loves to unravel the toilet roll. And in COVID times, the toilet roll is very precious. So, we had a chat with him and we explained the situation. He didn't understand. So, we've had to hide it. And sometimes he jumps on me when I am meditating.” She laughs.
Every week, Olivia enters a temple virtually for meditation. Her teacher is a Zen monk from a temple in Kyoto, whom she came to know of through her research. She doesn’t think she is very good at it. “It's a very interesting way to think about breathing and think about compassion for others. But what I probably love the most is his philosophical lesson or the discussion that he instigates at the beginning of the meditation. So, for me, it's so stimulating and so thoughtful and thought provoking. That is the main... It is really helpful for my mental health to be in that space. That's one thing that's new to me during lock down and has helped me a lot. So those are the two things that I've done that are different during COVID or pandemic.
I tease her about transference of Zen vibes that she receives from the monk and sends out to people in Melbourne. She gives me an amused smile. But it is true. Olivia has got an aura of peacefulness. She has a soothing voice that calms me down. I am able to pause and reflect. It isn’t a surprise to me that Olivia has been developing workshops for students around pausing and reflecting.
She explains what stimulated her to do this. “I think at the beginning of lockdown, we were just coming off the bushfire season here. There was a big impact on us from those bushfires and I felt really inspired to do something. One day there was a lot of smoke in the city of Melbourne. I noticed that students on campus didn’t seem affected by it. They were walking along, looking at their phones so there was the sense that they were disconnected to what was happening around them. I wondered that if the next generation of citizens or the people who are looking at nature and looking at what's around them with a particular skill in observation, then maybe things will be different in the future. But we can't assume that it would be if we don't inspire students to look carefully and observe.”
Unfortunately, due to lockdown in Melbourne, Olivia couldn’t offer these workshops on campus. So, she moved them online. As Object-based Learning Coordinator, most of Dr Olivia-‘the lovely’-Meehan’s routine involves a lot of practical work with cultural collections at the university. Her job isn’t dissimilar to museum and art curators, teaching people about art and artefacts. Additionally, she uses objects of various kinds as a learning tool. “The big shift during last year to working from home required me to be very creative and innovative in the way that I conceived teaching remotely. So that was quite challenging, but actually very interesting. And I felt that there was a lot of support. That transition, although it was quite scary, I think that we (my collaborators and I) managed to do some fabulous things, even though many of us had minimal technical skills or digital literacy.” Olivia doesn’t go into details of tedious conversion to remote crisis teaching. So, I steer my questions into another direction.
In addition to spending time with Marcel, weekly sessions of cultivating Zen energy, and distributing it to her human circle, what else does her Covid-19 life curtail? Olivia thoughts about this for a bit. “I wrote an essay about things of nature in Proust.” She mentions the French author, Marcel Proust. “It is for a project in which people reading Proust during lock down… It really helped me think about my experience. I think that writing the essay allowed me to see what we'd been through from a distance but then allowed me to get back into that sort of micro space of the home.”
She mentions how privileged she feels. “I'm very lucky, I have a room at a home where I can have all of my books and I can have a space to think and write and to work...I don't have a lot of interruptions apart from occasional renovations next door or the barking of neighbour’s dog... I felt very safe and comfortable and relaxed amidst everything that's going on. And I also live in an area where there's a small shopping village for getting my provisions. I don't feel that I need to go further afield to get food or supplies. So, I'm very fortunate to be able to walk to get groceries and fresh bread.”
Like all decent people, Olivia is uncomfortable to admit that her Covid-19 life experience has been productive and mostly positive. She mentions hard lives of people globally; job losses, lack of job security, Black Lives Matter movement, situation in Palestine, and disease and destruction caused by the pandemic.
“I don't like to admit the positive things often because I know people, colleagues and friends have children that they were home schooling, or they might've had a situation where they didn't have a room where they could have all the books and to work quietly. I feel bad saying that I actually quite liked some of my time in confinement, or I still am enjoying it because it makes me feel comfortable and in control of what I'm doing. Because in some ways it reflects that I don't have strong trust in people.” She refers to anxiety that comes from being a germophobe.
I sense a particular sort of guilt that comes with the being relatively privileged and being grateful for it. Professionally, Olivia has compensated by taking on even more workload to be able to justify her advantaged position. “I'm still trying to figure out a way forward where I don't work seven days a week.” Privately, she has tried sharing things that she finds beautiful in her walks, her garden, and her artwork with people. She has been making short videos of neighbourhood scenery; flowers, trees, and pets. Each video is allocated a French song and uploaded on Instagram. This is Olivia’s way of contributing to a repository of stress-busting content.“I tried to maintain a sense of visually sharing with people things that I find beautiful…In some ways, I think what I've learned about myself is that if you are feeling well and fit and healthy, then you are in a better position to help other people as well. So, I guess that has changed a little bit for me”.
Everlasting Daisies
She isn’t sure about what the long-term impact of Covid-19 induced confinement will be. “I am a bit worried about how I will emerge from the pandemic. But I guess it has allowed me time to value things. I am a bit scared. I don't know what tools I need to emerge. I'm not sure if my photographs of daisies will really cut it, but I'll see”. She smiles putting a sleepy Marcel on the sofa next to her. With her ability to stop, look, and breathe, her compassion to create meaningful conversations, and her connection with art and nature, something tells me, she will be okay. Also, she has Marcel.
