Being an accounting of the recent and continuing pandemic and its various circumstances, from the perspective of an inhabitant of the regions lately called the Lost Quarter. Dates unknown.

Day Thirteen

The morning arrives with fog and a chill to the air. The sky is cloudy with the promise of rain or snow. I have stopped looking at weather forecasts so that each morning there is something new to greet me, something to distract from all the noise that seems to be constantly going in my head. Instead, I can look out my window and see the day as it is and follow its changes through the course of the day.

There is something satisfying in deliberately not knowing, in just accepting whatever the day will bring. It is necessary in this time of tumult, where nothing seems solid at all and each hour brings some fresh horror that we must find the strength to face. I do not have the strength to face it all – none of us do. We have to measure ourselves and find those moments of solitude for our minds where we can turn off the thinking that plagues us as much as the grippe.

And so I will sit here looking out my window to start the day. It is gloomy now, perhaps soon to become miserable. But the weather here is unstable as my thoughts and a day – an hour – from now it is impossible to say what it will bring.