In a Silent World – March 26, 2020 –

Trains still run here in the silent world of illness that is Italy.  There are those who believe that the virus which has killed so many is not really so very bad.  Often people don’t believe, until they are in someway hurt, that bad things really do exist.

I sit on my terrace in the silence, the birds sing, the wind is warm and pleasant, the sun is warm.  There are no distant sounds of cars or jets high up in the sky to leave their white streaks.  The sky is limpid, virginal in fact, as though mankind has ceased to exist.

Looking back on the spring of 2020,  I will remember the silence of the clear skies and the earth as seen from satellites showing a “surprising” decrease in pollution.  I and many will also remember the silent truckloads of corpses, victims of the COVID-19, that snaked through the early morning streets of Bergamo. Many may never live through the silence of mourning loved ones. I mourn the many I’ve never met feeling sure that no one will mourn me.

But we are not yet finished with this illness, though we may be bored with it.  It’s so difficult to be healthy and isolated in this silent spring. Life is being renewed and spring beckons to us like a siren.

The silence is too loud.  We are so used to our comforting noise … the constant hubble-bubble of machinery and commentary.   Some will say: how absurd, why should we be isolated like this … and will congregate.  Then soon there will be more silence.

my heart beat
in social isolation
a silent world
gsk ’20