Lockdown Induced Silence

I like the feeling of silence that has dropped in the pandemic. I'm sleeping better, dreaming vividly, getting some work done from home, getting the garden in better shape than it's ever been. Feeling good, just had my cheerios. I know people are dying, and that's tragic. Makes me angry. Like I've been for years. Angry and loud, like everyone, especially loud when I'm online. Whose fault is it that thousands are dying? Honestly, I'm tired of the drama of press briefings and elections and protests. The name calling, the ugliness, the vanity and all the posing and the ugliness. The greed, the cynical circles and the crimes that go unpunished. I'm talking about you, deplorable people. Are you happy now? Are We Great Yet? No? That's okay. It's not your fault. Relax and sit down. Just want the sound of silence, now that I've developed a taste for it.

But the days are rushing by and I worry that we haven't been locked down long enough. The planet needs more time to heal. Maybe a year or two like this and we'd take care of global warming, the pulse of summer growth in the forests absorbing enough to get us over the hump. This could be the best thing that ever happened, a chance to reconnect with the land, with what truly makes life worth living. Even in the cities the air is clean enough to see the sky and people are reclaiming the streets for pedestrians. Let the birdsong be heard. Let the seismologists sense the shift of the plates undisturbed by the hum of Mammon. Let the whale populations rebound in the southern oceans, the glaciers reform in the mountain passes. We'd develop a way of life that wasn't built on the logic of the cancer cell and the psychopath, to the benefit of both and the detriment of the majority of folk who follow along sheepishly and are told which way to point and which way to shoot.