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 Two Hundred Seventy Four

The other day we drove by my offices, which I have not been in, or even near, since March, life not taking me to that area of the city for any other purpose. It was strange to look upon familiar buildings that did not feel familiar at all. They seemed either larger or smaller than I remembered, the colours not quite matching my memory.

A massive new building is being constructed there. When I left work it was still just a skeleton of steel and concrete. One could sense the size of the thing and something of its shape, but little else. Now those bones are hidden, an unlovely exterior covering most of the building, though a few gaps remain. It is another stage in a metamorphosis, though its final shape and colour are still to be revealed.

To the north there was a small shopping centre with restaurants, a pharmacy, a butcher and a bar. I often wandered over at lunch when I was in the office, our campus having no good options for food. All of that is gone now, torn down for a new complex with shopping, restaurants, a hotel and condos. Construction was supposed to have begun this year, but it has been delayed by the presence of the grippe reborn. Now there is only a parking lot there, sitting empty for the most part, because few people drive to the campus any longer.

It sometimes feels as though the grippe reborn has exposed the seams in our life we didn’t even know were there. What is obvious and ever present is often overlooked in favour of new happenstance. It is too easy to notice all that has changed so abruptly with the arrival of the dread lord, but what is more challenging is to see what hasn’t changed, or what is changing slowly. Like a glacier, you can only see what has happened with the perspective of years.