i wonder how many people are feeling the like myself, as the lockdowns around the world continue? to be trapped in your own house must feel like death itself. no theaters, no bookstores, cafes, churches open, means we're afraid to breathe. even where i am, high in a mountain tower, isolated as always on the job, i feel anxious before my days off.
i have watched a lot of youtube videos. adventurous travelers keep on trucking, where ever there's a crack in the system: snorkling off naples, moving to a new home in portugal, flying to the coast of mexico, taking precautions and accepting the risks. since i can't do any of those things while working, i feel the presence of the end being too close.
the question is: how do i keep going while in prison? i remember george jackson in solitary confinement practiced yoga all day. it certainly helps to have a cause. i don't really have one. the worship of beauty, the magic of poetry and art seem irrelevant in this time. true, i know that's not true. many folks surviving watching movies, studying art online, visiting with folks in the backyard, yet i have always been haunted by the sense of the transitory...
that's part of the problem. feeling nothing i do will survive or have meaning. the truth is any life is finite. as i looked up at the magnificent passing comet a couple of weeks ago i felt awe and at the same time very small. the irony is all of us made of stardust, the right hand from a different star than the left. i'll be recycled in water and air. any breath i have will be breathed by almost everyone on earth as long as humanity survives.
how long that will be should be no concern of mine. yet the present crisis masking the real thing: global warming. the spread of the virus nothing compared to the melting ice-caps and rising seas. i keep wondering if the antarctic will crack in half, the whole earth wobbling, or meteors fall from the sky. to find the whole earth engulfed by an epidemic leaves me facing my own mortality. i think the best option not always clear.
