I was walking across the Commons lawn, masked, with my bag of two Saturday croissants that I’d pre-ordered and paid for. I was thinking about the Black Death, the Great Fire of London, the smallpox that killed most of the native Americans. I was thinking about the world in a way our ancestors couldn’t have possibly imagined. The plague, the Great Fire—back then, what was happening in the neighborhood defined the world. But we’ve seen the great blue ball from space; we know where it actually begins and ends. We know it does begin and end.
Then I was thinking how we’re the same beings we were centuries ago. Balanced on the knife-blade of living, danger on either side. That hasn’t changed, except that we have a lot more knowledge of ourselves as a species. We get it, some of us do, that the entire human race will rise and fall like everything else. Like the butterflies and the penguins and the redwood trees. No thing lasts forever.
Our vision is both broader and smaller. Microscopically, too. Our sense organs have been augmented by digital super-powers. Which sort of makes us bigger in the universe. King Kongs, but fragile in the way large things are fragile. They can be overcome by a plague of locusts. We can be overcome by a virus.
After all this perfectly useless and possibly gloomy ruminating, I was back at the downstairs door, having to unlock it these days, and then I got on the elevator, wondering for the Nth time how dangerous my gloves are after pushing the numbers. Jerry was putting up the groceries I’d gotten just before this. I picked up the bleach-cloth to help. Jerry said, oh no, we don’t need to do that. He read it. Do I need to worry about my gloves? I don’t know. I don’t know anything.
The still-ancient mind is always sending out tendrils. Is this fearful, is it not? The tendrils called thoughts. We get so lost in them we walk across the spring grass with some lovely croissants in our bag and forget to notice. We are thinking about disasters. We are doing what we always do, trying to fix things with our minds. Nothing wrong with that, but meanwhile, there are birds and grass and a little sun for a change.
I’ve been listening with special attention to the birds. They’re making a lot of spring noise, looking for mates! I’ve noticed the different quality of sound, even in this small city we live in. The background hum of cars is reduced to not-much. It’s like a turning over of the soil. Now the small creatures are on top and we’re walking softly over their territory.
I stepped around a rotten log that’s sinking slowly into dirt. It gives me great satisfaction to see the workings of things, how one thing disappears into the next. How life is arranged this way. Well, not satisfaction when the disappearance causes pain, but at least understanding that this is how things work. The virus is going to surge and pass, surge and pass. Other calamities will take its place before the tears even dry from this one. Meanwhile, there are bird calls and sunshine and croissants. Mine is always spinach-feta, Jerry’s is ham and cheese. Today, surprise! An extra one somehow got tossed inside, apple with frosting dribbled across. I shouldn’t eat all that sugar, but I did.
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