A Cloudless Storm

Day 1

Its beautiful outside. Its still a little chilly but then its only March. The sun is lazily breaking through translucent clouds and the hills are vaguely hidden by a light mist. The promenade is quiet, the odd couple making slow progress with no apparent urgency. Parents push their young child on a swing seemingly unaware of the potential monster parading on every surface in plain sight. Maybe they have hand sanitiser but then again the invisible danger is likely non-existent in the park at this time — but who knows.

It feels strange looking out on such an inviting scene with the knowledge that out there somewhere is a threat we cannot see or anticipate with any precision. The window feels a little like a pretend firewall because though the danger is out there it won’t be attempting an assault through the glass. It almost seems like we are being teased and asked to take precautions we can’t know the efficacy of but I don’t feel like the virus is my enemy; rather its a conglomerate of circumstances within which the virus is one weapon.

I feel like I’m in the eye of an invisible storm. The initial frenzy of gathering knowledge about the virus and deciding to self isolate despite a lack of urgency coming from a government that appears to be like a deer in the headlights, has gone. We now need to move forward, but in the face of this unknowing the motivation is lacking. We are waiting for something but with no desire for it to happen — anticipation with only potential crisis at the end is calcifying. And its so quiet — not just audibly, my inbox is not updating with anything useful and my mobile, though still smart, is not behaving like a telephone.

I too am a deer staring into social media, looking for meaning that isn’t there. I’m mostly drowning out the noise in my head with information and more information and useless updates.