I witness a French writer, via TrueAnon (88), offer the opinion that

this is a banal virus (not a impotent one; he means it in a very Sartrean way),
and one that despite the deaths appears as a non-event,
and therefore, that after it, things will be exactly the same, only a little worse.

The last part of which makes me think that it’s like the Obama presidency, or the Biden one to probably come.

The writer goes on to remark that ‘the same only a little worse’ is an indication of the slow decline of Western predominance. Sure, maybe. But I see it in broader terms, as the decline of the virus known as civilization. It’s only that the Fall is easier to see, in a place where most everyone has running water and many people have far too much money.

The restaurants in which they dine (whether this means Sardi’s or Chili’s; I’m reminded of Shawn II yet to come) run through a cycle of closing and then small scale corporate welfare, and then crashing for good. The ripples of which are felt throughout the economy and especially the labor markets.

***

There’s a breathtaking sight in the southeastern sky tonight. It’s a tall monsoonal cloud bank, with the moon trying to rise from underneath it, and lighting it through with a noctilucent glow. Just above the glow is a bright planet, Jupiter maybe.

It’s a kind of mountain in this way …

When I chose to marry at for the first time, and move East to do it, it came crashing down around my ears in a short time, just like the Towers it was contemporaneous with.

I started applying for jobs back here and I took the first one I was offered, gratefully. I moved right under the shadow of the best mountain, and I said often (though usually to myself) that that mountain saved my life–my spirit, at least.

There is no mountain to save me this time.

The salvation here comes in smaller and less spectacular, more fleeting doses.

That have to be watched for and felt deep before they disappear like a mountain never will, at least on a human time frame.

I’ve heard some people can live off them that way even in Kansas, and though I’m skeptical, I can see how it could be true, if you grew up in that perfect unyielding lack of elevation, like Dorotea of Gale, and Toto too.