The Flowers Are Always Brighter After The Rain

Neighborhood walks are still the way to go. A laughable amount of street crossing is necessary to keep the social distancing thing going, but the few people who are out and about seem very aware of what to do. Spot someone coming towards you? Quick, look for a way out: a sidewalk or a driveway to wait in, maybe step into the street, cross over, or just shrink into yourself, become invisible for a few minutes, avert your face. We are beginning to cringe when we see another human being. That’s not one of the things I want to retain when this is over.


Day 14, That’s Two Weeks

Something another blipper commented on recently keeps nagging at me: perhaps these strange lives we are leading might be a chance to reexamine our experience of time. It makes my head spin a little, and I’m not even sure what she meant. In fact she may have said something quite different,but something about what I retained resonates with me, makes me curious. Days without commitments, days without clocks, without structure. How do we situate ourselves in this void? 

In every movie about prison or other confinement, the character always marks off the days—scratched on the wall, etched into a rock, marked somehow in little groups of five. It’s made clear that he does it to stay sane, that it is essential for survival to know that time passes. How many days have I been in this cave, on this boat, in this cell? 


Is it important? I still operate within a recognizable framework, but I barely know what day it is anymore. Why do I count off the weeks of quarantine?