Lockdown Day 15

Escape from New York and all its horrifying sci-fi imagery of a future world, although set in 1997, isn’t even happening yet and wouldn’t be quite the same here, although these seemingly sci-fi draconian restrictions, which are getting stricter and stricter by the day, (and the woodsmen can not even go about their business as usual as there is now a moratorium on that) and are really in the community’s best interest but do give one pause, and do seem to be working as, with cautious optimism and the knowledge of noticeably improving statistics as predicted for this 15th day of lockdown, I could escape from Barga Vecchia this sparkling cold windy morning over empty winding roads without imagining coming back to that future world yet either, so far. 

The biggest challenge is finding things to do to pass the hours inside and, unfortunately without much exercise or intellectually challenging activity or even a good lively conversation or energizing argument, dissipate some of this existential angst, that sometimes means in the middle of the night too and as I wile away the hours watching the digital clock do its line dance through not insignificant others’ birth dates and other-life seeming house numbers; 12:45; 01:54; 03:15; 03:24; until 04:05 when the birds began their ascent into what would end in the cacophonous crescendo of the euphemistically called dawn chorus after which I might descend into sleep, not to be disturbed these days at 06:35 by my genial gentle giant of a neighbor’s otherwise adorable vintage cinquecento as it cranks over and over and over until it finally catches and rattles off out the piazza and echoes and reverberates between the centuries’ old stone buildings. Do I really miss that? The birds beginning their chorus so early must mean they’re as confused as I am about the upcoming daylight savings time change which will afford me the pretense of sleeping in, when the clocks spring ahead while we shelter in place, like treading water, and say it’s an hour later than my body knows it to be and I can have the illusion of luxuriating in bed and killing time, which is all I have to slay right now except painful memories, Elf knights, a la Lady Isabel, or imaginary enemies, and fabricating fiction and drawing out warrior women, ice princesses and Irish pirate queens as I wile away the long days indoors until the digital clock says it’s past bedtime but I’m not tired at all. 

Strunk & White are thrashing in their graves.