Combustible Alchemist Rises

Time passes quickly, sometimes slowly from the mist of our current condition. It is hard to put a finger on. Difficult to fully comprehend. Everything changed like the Pink Moon in April. Familiar, huge, close, slow moving and at the same time far away. You did not understand until Horace almost died, then came back to tell part of the tale. A mysterious sickness like pneumonia mixed with malaria. Invisible. Threatening. In Manhattan, they hid the Auschwitz-like piles of body bags stacked into refrigerator trucks from forming long lines by stationing them throughout the city so not to create more panic. No one can say for sure what it is but some history of how it lurks, points to China, and now Europe. Our wayward president provoked, in his misguided talks, attacks on Chinese people. Always looking for someone to abuse. It is not one to blame but everyone. As always. 

People in bandannas look like train robbers. Surgical masks and rubber gloves liter the streets here and there. The pandemic reality is as nimble as that. Trash indicating a lack of seriousness. You, and other travelers, cannot escape. No planes, trains or buses to move the body into thinking life may be different elsewhere. It is not. Enduring seems suffocating. Friends turn their backs and others become important. You look to comedy with a purpose. Laughing releases anger, fear and hopelessness. Who is doing good? The search soothes the soul. You pledge to connect. The silky sun on spring leaves hide the fact that in many places Covid 19 victims suffer alone, forgotten, in a wretched state of life and death. There is much to contemplate. You move inch by inch through your own challenges looking for a remedy. You know you are not alone since the hotline is unreachable lately as the date of resurrection is pushed forward; freedom denied until a later date. Many feel they cannot last much longer in their circumstance. 

You feel numb, dumb struck, encased in red Jello. You have much to be grateful for. The constant aggravation makes you lose your spot in the line of sanity. Who can fix any of this? You watch those with larger issues, virus or not, do remarkable good for their community. Lives saved, hope given, by simple gestures of hardworking people with nothing to lose, with everything to lose. The truth of it changes attitude. You stack up your own needs with what you have. Once again, you landed on your feet amidst the terrors. A tale of two cities life. You have some freedoms, these abilities, the determination and resilience to continue. You tell the black dog to go outside and have fun among the freshly cut grass. You do what you must to put things right, trying to understand the point of it all. Somewhere in the world someone is starving, being bombed, trafficked, flayed by monsters. Such thoughts help you rearrange your disposition so you can go on and be of some use.