I had to go back through the last few blogs and redo the dates. I didn’t realize what day of the week it was/is. Chalk that up to another Covid Casualty of Sensibility. If I don’t leave the house on a regular basis and work/teach asynchronously, days of the week do not matter. Sure, there are some track meets and youth games that fall on weekends, and I see my kids on particular days of the week, but those moments feel like snapping back into a reality that is temporary. In truth, short of needing to be somewhere on a specific date or needing to post something for a class, I am legitimately not connected to the standard seven day reality at all, and I like it. That is one good thing to come out of all of this.
So, here I am up in the woods. Last night I noticed my neighbor watching OAN news (for several hours) through their open window. I found myself wondering what sort of reality they’ve been spinning up as a result of that newsfeed. I wonder how much anger they are collecting as a result of what is being pumped into their brains in this otherwise empty wilderness. That too is a Covid Casualty. No, not them persay but the pursuit of Common Sense. We stopped asking questions (or at least the right ones) and began looking for the people who were saying the things we quietly wanted to hear or the things that felt right to us. This has always been the way but it feels much larger now. The filter bubble is expanding. All it took was a strongman megalomaniac on the heels of someone who didn’t look or feel like anyone the ‘people’ were ‘used to’ and the result is what we have right here.
But that is not my cross to bear. Yes, by saying that I am living in a deflection, but I have other things–smaller and more immediate crosses to bear.
Some Thoughts:
- I love it out here. I want to live out in the woods and have my own treehouse or other retreat where I can hear the water gurgling in a nearby pond or stream and the laughter of my loved ones in the distance. It is from this perch high in the trees that I would write and love that I was writing as I do now.
- Tomorrow is actually Wednesday and I will have some halfway decent football talk. Is football my only sport now? Seems so…