foggy morning where I live
On another Saturday three weeks ago (here) I invited visitors to our site, whether old-timers or newcomers, to talk with us and each other about what was happening to them and their communities in this time of the virus and how they were feeling about it. Time has seemed disjointed and hard to track since then, and even before then. For some people it might seem to have slowed down or sped up, but I suspect for most of us it has simply stopped, or become like a directionless soup of events.
Looking back at the previous version of this invitation three weeks ago, I thought of all the things that have changed dramatically in the outer world since then, but also how little they have changed in terms of my own daily existence, mostly bottled up here inside my home with my wife and two cat-children. On the other hand, I can’t say I’ve successfully adapted to this strange new world of isolation and invisible threat. I think others have done a good job of adapting, and others have gone steeply downhill. But I suspect that even the most naturally reclusive types have missed human contact — real face-to-face contact.
We are social animals, and swapping stories over the internet isn’t really an adequate substitute for the physical interaction that’s gone missing. But it may be therapeutic at some level, and entertaining at another one (the previous version of this post certainly generated a lot of interesting comments), and so I’d like to repeat what I did three weeks ago and invite whoever happens to encounter this post to do some sharing of their lives and thoughts. The suggestions are the same as before: Continue reading »