It’s been a few minutes, but I hope everybody has been up to some sort of good.
Wow, the world has changed significantly since my last post. Again, I hope that everybody who reads this post is taking decent care of themselves and their own. Part of the shock of this crisis is inherent in its novelty–we have not had to suffer the scourge of a viral outbreak since the first world war. Now here we are, hunkering down in our homes, hoping to keep our loved ones safe.
My grandmother used to tell me stories about how she spent the summers when polio was prevalent. About how she would stare out the window of her hot apartment (air conditioning did not exist in the interwar period) and look out at the empty streets and consume massive amounts of taffy. I’ve tried to avoid this fate by going out and running six feet away from everybody I encounter on the street.
The wild thing that I feel about our current climate is the level of insecurity we all feel. If it’s really the end, everything falls apart, what do we do? How will we cope with a rugged and violent future, red in beak and claw? For how long will we remain bunkered in our apartments and houses watching the braver folk among us wander the streets, en route to their essential jobs?
Personally, I’m spending a lot of time staring out a window into a concrete alley that used to be the backyard of a smaller country house. It has since been destroyed and replaced with a brick-and-concrete monolith that obscures the sun in the afternoon and looks otherwise as imposing as a forty-foot Maori head statue of black pumice. I miss having a tree next door. My summers were brighter with it obscuring the glare.
But our futures are governed by whatever ill presence holds the rudder of our ships. The notion of our lives is to ensure that we are the captain of the boat that guides us into the blue oblivion. We cannot predict the violence that the natural world wreaks upon us, but we can always make time to prepare the things we care about before they are forced to weather the storm.
With that in mind: I’ve been getting a lot of spam comments from a CBD manufacturer, which makes me kind of glad to see that there are still exploitative interests trying to fill in my forums. A normal person should be able to make contact with me, as Rich Hart did the other day. Sorry I haven’t gotten that email server up yet; rest assured, it’s still in the pipeline, but my bandwidth is extremely short.
And, to all our readers, a thorough benediction is upon thee. I hope we all sleep in warm beds tonight close to the ones that matter the most to us. Stay safe, eat well, be easy, and the powers that be will see us through this storm.
Chaos abounds, but so does love.