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 One Hundred Fifty Eight

The southern reaches of the Lost Quarter seem to never really end. There is no border, no definitive point at which one leaves or enters. This is one of the reasons the ways into the Quarter are so easily forgotten. You have to know where you are to find where you’re going.

If the south of the Quarter has a border, it is a narrow, milky river that turns south into the great empire beneath us. It was not the border for Those Who Went Away, nor for the first of Those Who Came. Both moved back and forth across the river, using it as a campsite on their way to other places. The border between the great empire and the dominions was not settled, at least not in the minds of anyone who lived there, and the vast prairies stretched on in every direction for hundreds of kilometres.

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 One Hundred Fifty Five

Memory is a strange thing. Everything we are living through now feels monumental. Our battle with the grippe reborn consumes the whole planet. It has fundamentally altered our way of being and many of us shall never return to our old patterns. Or so it seems now.

The last time the dread lord regained his powers and took form, a century ago, the world was just as consumed. It was even more ill-prepared than we were, having been engulfed in a terrible war, and millions died as a result. The same quarantine protocols were put in place, the same practices required. In the Lost Quarter whole towns were nearly wiped out, and yet there are no markers or memorials to those events. It is not remembered in the same way that wars and other momentous happenings are. It is a footnote.

Certainly those of us who live through it will always carry the memory with us. And if the battle with the dread lord stretches on for years with greater and greater consequences to our lives and institutions, then the scars will show for decades to come. Change is like a glacier, shifting imperceptibly, but moving all the same. You only notice it looking back over many years. The dread lord is of the greatest consequence now, but in the coming decades, for those of us fortunate enough to see it, will it seem momentous or just a part of greater changes we are undergoing without even realizing it?

The Roman Empire, like all empires, didn’t fall in a collapsing heap. It dissipated over the years, crumbling away, piece by piece, so gradually that many of those living within it would not have been aware. They would have lived the same lives their fathers and grandfathers did for the most part. Only their sons and grandsons looking back would have been able to see what had been lost and to know that it could not be regained. For they were the ones who had to live in the consequences.

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 One Hundred Fifty Four

As if mocking my claims yesterday that the nights are getting cooler despite the heat, last evening refused to cool off at all. It was still 25 degrees at eleven, the air heavy and stifling. Our bedroom is, unfortunately the warmest room in the house and retreating there to bed was the last thing either of us wanted to do.

I was restless most of the night, struggling to ease into sleep and unable to stay that way for long once I did. The heat ebbed and flowed and my dreams and thoughts blended together, as I passed from sleeping to waking and back again, flitting in and out of my mind, never staying long enough to take hold.

Morning when I walked my love to work in her tower was cool, a relief after such a night. I started off sluggish and distracted, but by the time I returned home, I felt more myself. Now I sit at my correspondences, dutiful as always, sipping another cup of coffee trying to ignore the edge of exhaustion that surrounds me.

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 One Hundred Fifty Three

The heat has returned after a week of pleasant weather. It seems it will be here for a few days more at least, refusing to loosen its hold upon us.

Yesterday my love and I ventured out late in the afternoon, when the warmth was still at its peak, and exercised for a time. I was soon dripping with sweat, the air around me seeming to hold me tight in a scorching embrace.

The nights at least provide a little respite, and the first hints of the coming autumn, for it cools down considerably, more than it did even a few weeks ago. The sun sets sooner and rises later. Soon we will be complaining of the cold, rain and snow and wishing for sultry August temperatures.

When it is this warm I feel more lethargic than sultry, and damp, but not in an attractive way. It is more difficult to bear now that I am stranded at home because of the grippe reborn. My office had air conditioning, while my home does not, so I have no way to escape the growing tide of warmth that arrives each morning. Before we might have gone to a movie theatre, to watch whatever, just to pass a few hours in the chill of a mall. Now I put damp wash clothes in the freezer and press them to my face until the chill has been wrung from them.

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 One Hundred Fifty Two

A sluggish return to correspondences after a week of wandering the countryside. It is always hard to return to work after time away and it has only become more so in this year of the dread lord. A fog covers my thoughts and refuses to lift. I am distracted, irritable, wanting something, but unsure what it might be.

My love and I returned home from our journey, exhausted by all we had done, and spent the last few days at nothing, dreading returning to work. All ambition had leached from us. The grand plans we had talked about for our return home were forgotten and we spent our days at home, aimless and restless, yet unwilling to do much of anything.

I tell myself it is just that we needed time to recover from our trip. Journeys are always exhausting, no matter how enjoyable they may be, and that is especially so under the shadow of the grippe reborn, where even the simplest and most pleasurable of activities are haunted by unease. Or perhaps it was that we were unconsciously gathering strength for our return to our daily drudgeries.

In truth these are all just symptoms of our exhaustion with this neverending present, with the grippe reborn and all the attendant concerns that never quite leave our minds, even when they seem absent from our thoughts. And we are the lucky ones in truth, we can’t forget that, both employed, both healthy. For the moment at least. What the next moment brings we shall see.

We are tired of this. Tired of having to think about it constantly, to always be aware. Tired of not being able to think more than a week or two into the future. Tired of the worry about what is to come and what isn’t. Just tired, and wishing somehow that there could be some sort of end to this all.

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 One Hundred Fifty One

My love and I left for a week of wandering about the western dominions, a respite from the drudgery of work and the general anxiety that attends our waking hours because of the grippe reborn. The dread lord has found his way to those realms too, of course, and the quarantine protocols are in place there, so there was no escaping his presence entirely. We still carried our masks everywhere and had to think about what to do and where to eat and all manner of things that previously we wouldn’t have given a second thought to.

It is habit now, which makes it somewhat easier, though I long for a day when the dread lord does not enter my thoughts. I fear that day may never arrive. Even once we have vanquished him, the habits of anxiety will persist.

We had occasion to visit my parents who recently moved from the Lost Quarter, now living on a piece of land to the south and west, though they still have cattle on pastures there and return often to see to them. The area they live in now is nearly indistinguishable from the Quarter, a rolling prairie that stretches off to the east. To the west there are great hills, topped by thickets of trees, wild places that are as little travelled as the roads in the Quarter.

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 One Hundred Forty One

The heat broke for a day or two, the weather pleasant and delightful, but it is returning in full force today. The morning was cool as I walked with my love but already the temperature is rising and soon the cool will be a distant memory. The sky is clear and bright, except for along the horizon where a haze of clouds sits that the sun will soon burn away.

My love and I have been feeling restless again, each in our own way. There is a feeling of helplessness that is hard to avoid as the quarantine stretches on and on. Everything feels in between, a moment waiting to happen that never arrives.

In response we talk of moving somewhere, starting life anew. The economy suffers here, as it does everywhere now, but there seems little chance of a return to old ways and prosperities. Worse, our leaders ostrich themselves and do nothing to build for the new world that we can all sense must be coming. This was true before the dread lord arrived and will only become more of a problem when he is gone and we must all pick up the pieces and move on.

But really what we want is something to grasp hold of, to be able to imagine a life after this limbo. To be able to do that is to believe that it will be over. Right now that seems beyond our imagination.

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 One Hundred Forty

I have tried accomplishing things today, but most of those attempts have been in vain. There are days when it doesn’t matter what you do or how hard you try, you just get nothing done and this is one of them. I have tried on and off throughout the day to find the words to write, and have started and stopped half a dozen times at least, writing a sentence and then striking it from the page.

I don’t particularly believe in inspiration. Waiting for it is certainly a fool’s game. Most days, when faced with a blank page and an indifference to do anything I can set myself to the task. The words will come, whether good, bad or indifferent – I can never tell anyway. Normally there is a pleasure in doing so, in the act of making something from nothing and filling the white page with blank ink. It eases my mind, sends all worries and cares away, and takes me to another place.

But today is not one of those days. My mind refuses to wander off on its own peculiar paths. It stays on the page and refuses to budge, the cursor flickering like a light bulb about to go out. The dog days of summer perhaps. The heat of the last days has drained me and my body and mind refuse to answer and settle down to my tasks.

What more is there to say anyway about the grippe reborn that has not been said. He remains and so do we. And so, tomorrow is another day.

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 One Hundred Thirty Nine

The heat persists, day after day, not loosening its grip upon us. My nights are restless. Afternoons I am draggy and irritated, lethargic and uninspired.

At least I do not have to work outdoors as I did in my youth. When I first left the Lost Quarter I worked one summer constructing cell phone towers across the Western Dominions. We would move from town to town putting up towers, mounting antennas and running cable up their length. Climbing hundreds of metres, carrying tools, is hot work at the best of times. Summer was construction season, of course, and the days were long: twelve hours or more. Often we would be out until we lost the light and it became dangerous to be on the towers.

After one such long day we drove through the countryside – a rolling prairie south and west of the Quarter – to the nearest town. Dusk had settled by the time we arrived, the sun gone completely from the sky, though the heat had not relinquished its hold. We called the two new hotels in town asking for rooms and were told they were sold out. There was a baseball tournament in town.

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 One Hundred Thirty Eight

Before the grippe reborn’s shadow returned to this world my love and I had intended to visit her family in the eastern isles. As we booked hotels in January we heard the first whispers of the dread lord’s return. I dismissed the matter, as so many did in those early days. Every year there is word of some plague arising and only rarely do they consume the entire planet, and even then it takes some months. If it came to these parts I thought it would be in the fall.

At the beginning of February we went to a travel clinic to make certain our vaccines were up to date. The nurse told us then she didn’t think we would be going, yet I thought she was being overly cautious. Even though it was clear by then that the grippe reborn had fully regained his powers, I still believed that power could be muted, slowed and contained. How utterly blind it all seems now. By the end of the month we cancelled the trip and by the end of March the quarantine protocols were in place.

The speed of it all was blinding and the disorientation from it all persists, especially as the quarantine time slows down and the future beyond the grippe reborn’s shadow remains distant. I wonder when we will be able to go on that trip. Not this year certainly, or the next.

When we finally do, I suspect it will be much more expensive. For a long time companies have been trying to make travel, even locally, as cheap as possible, by offering little to customers, paying their employees as little as possible, and serving as many people as they possibly could. How feasible will that model be in two years time?

There are so many things where businesses and whole industries are just trying to survive, to make it through the year. The fundamentals that they based their business on have crumbled and nothing new has been built in its place. What happens if they have to make it through another somehow? Many won’t. Some will adapt. As will we. There will be things we don’t return to, though I hope to see the eastern isles myself, to sit upon a beach at sunrise.