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 Fifty One

As we are all struggling to cope with our enforced confinement, coupled with the dread at what comes when we are at last given our release, I thought I would share the routine that has kept me well-occupied and, if not unworried, at least not entirely consumed by the anxieties of this dreadful age.

5:30am: I awaken for the first time, restive and haunted by some dream. Staring at the darkness I try to puzzle together those images and scenes that never quite fit until I can drift back to sleep.

6:30am: My love’s alarm goes off on her phone, stirring me awake again. I ignore it as I do every morning and return to sleep.

7:00am: My alarm comes on. I hit snooze.

7:30am: At last I relent and give in to the crowing of my alarm and rise from bed, feeling irritable and unwilling to face the 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 Fifty

A sunny, glorious day and my love and I return to the river to walk, wandering through the valley and then out and above into the bluffs. There we can see the river winding and curling through a landscape at once familiar and foreign.

People wander past as we stare down at the majestic view, coming in pairs or alone. Behind us three teenagers have gathered together in defiance of the quarantine law. It is oddly a comfort, teenagers still being defiant in these trying times.

As we wander along the bluff, keeping the river in sight to our right, we come across a small memorial in the midst of a grassy knoll. It is a sandstone block with a metal plate set atop it, about waist height, marking the passing of a Muscovite princess who had lived her life in exile in the Quarter.

We stood awhile, my love and I, looking down at the river’s course. A breeze stirred and we set out on our way.

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 Forty Nine

A gloomy day, cloud covered and damp with rain. Much needed moisture, for it has been so dry. The land is parched and slow to turning green.

For weeks now the question has been, what comes next. How do we go from this strange moment and return to some kind of ordinary existence? The truth is there is no normal to return to. We will just move to another strange instant, where the oddness of it will gradually recede and seem familiar as our current predicament has started to.

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 Forty Eight

A satisfying day. I have turned over the earth in preparation for moving my seedlings outdoors. That day will be coming soon, though the days are not yet truly warm. The trees outside are transforming by the day, their branches now filled with tiny leaves where a few days ago you had to look closely to make out the buds piercing their soft bark.

My love is in the other room talking with her family who still live on the eastern islands far from here. Things there are much as they are in the Quarter. The grippe reborn has touched us all. It is hard to be so far from those we care about and not to succumb to worry.

The day otherwise has been quiet, as though everyone were fearful of disturbing the reverie that has settled over us all. There is a peace that seems impossible, wrong even, given all that is happening and all the dread lord has wrought. I feel it all the same. I want to hold it tight so that it doesn’t go, but I know that would be foolish. It is like holding water, if you try to clench it in your hands it will just flow through your fingers.

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 Forty Seven

They went riding out into the Quarter, following no roads for there were none to be found. A train line was being constructed in the southern regions of the Quarter, which would forever transform the place. Those Who Went Away were in the process of their sad exile, leaving only a few remnants of their existence behind as they left.

The riders came upon these remnants, but paid them little mind, for they were a part of that transformation dooming Those Who Left to their banishment. They rode in pairs, theodolites and maps at hand, spreading out in every direction, moving at precise angles to each other so that every bit of territory would be covered. As they went they took their measurements, adding to their maps and journals, so that every mile of territory was set out in their books.

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 Forty Six

My allergies acted up for a time and the aftereffects linger throughout the day. It is like static in the background of the radio, present, but unnoticed, until at day’s end I am left exhausted and miserable. I want to claw my eyes out, dig into my throat and scratch the itch there. 

This is my annual springtime conundrum. After weeks of waiting for the cold and snow to dissipate, for winter to loosen its grasp and let the warmth of the new season in, all I want is to go out and enjoy the air. To smell the damp earth that holds the promise of verdant fields. To see the buds of leaves forming on trees.

Those goddamn trees. The air is choked with their pollen. Polluters every one. And those fields. Poison once they come to bloom. I can feel the itch of them even now. Now I have a choice. Do I tempt fate and go out, breath in that putrefying air? Or do I stay within, quarantining myself from the very air I breath? It is a cruel fate: a quarantine within a quarantine. If nothing else it will keep me from the dread lord’s grasp for a time.

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 Forty Five

I stumbled through the day with low-lidded eyes. A jaundiced stare. What evil lies in the hearts of men? All of it.

There’ll be no mercy once you fall. They’ll swarm upon you like locusts on the field. Ravenous and rapacious as a banker smelling foreclosure.

We’re all of us still yearning, desperate to get out of our own thoughts. Miserable and vicious. A sword called vengeance thirsts for blood.

I rested easily for a time, but then I awoke in the night to find myself surrounded by tangled vines whose flowers bowed heavily, the weight of their poison filling them up. Having taken the cure, I drank my fill.

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 Forty Four

The days are long and the nights seem too short, uneasy and filled with strange dreams.

We cross the potter’s ground off some lost byway, hair rising on my arm. You pause by some unmarked stone, making signs with your hands of some ancient ritual, and begin to sing an unmelodious tune under your breath. When you are done with your song you pull out a bottle heavy with some cloudy liquid. You pour a bit on the ground before the stone, take a pull and offer it to me. I take it and swallow the bitter liquid within, though it does nothing to quench my thirst.

“We must be going,” you say. “The hour is getting late.” And so it is.

The dead take the backroads, arms hanging out of the rolled down window of a pickup truck, a billowing cloud of dust left in their wake. We see their trails in the distance and are careful to avoid them, turning off the road when we have to, taking old wagon trails and cow paths.

In the distance some wild creature howls, mournful, and is answered by some other near enough to give me a chill. You give it no notice, your eyes upon the horizon, as the wind begins to stir. Wordlessly you point and I see the rider approaching.

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 Forty Three

I woke up this morning to find my proud seedlings all collapsed, their stems flimsy and weak, after I had neglected to water them yesterday. After several minutes of panic and choice invective, directed at the plants for their failure to cooperate, I spritzed some water upon the soil and waited and hoped.

How miserable I was, my weeks of careful nurturing seemingly all for naught. What would normally have been a minor frustration now seemed a portentous failure. How could I recover from this? For a moment it seemed impossible. I swore a lot, which helped a little.

Yet within an hour the seedlings had returned to their former splendour, stretching up toward the sun, showing far more resilience than I had managed. There is a lesson there, I suppose, though I would have to be willing to learn it. Cursing, however, is more fun.

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 Forty Two

People come and go in the Lost Quarter, as they do everywhere. That was never more the case than in those years when Those Who Left were exiled and Those Who Came began to stream into the Quarter looking for a better life. Some found it there and set down roots, while others came for a time and then passed on.

Mabel was one of the latter. She came with her husband, after the first rush of Those Who Came had settled. Her husband was an itinerant labourer who went from job to job, never staying anywhere long, and as such they had lived a somewhat desperate existence in several towns on the outskirts of the Quarter. Her husband was a man of schemes, forever hitting upon one idea after another to make his fortune, until at last he decided upon buying a smallholding in the Quarter. It would be hard, toiling work, but there was money to be made. Everyone said so.