I glanced up and out the window, noticing the bright blue sky, the still air, the quiet, the peace…a vague promise of spring fully upon us now. Wee creatures are calm yet, readying themselves for the joyful noise of going about a regular season’s business. On my precious, last season installed, flora the buds are swelling up. Each winter-hardened green thing is warming, softening. Where there was tundra, there is delicious squirming mud. I thought, “We made it! Summer is on the way!” and, “We made it! Vaccines are rapidly arming us against danger!” It was then Jethro Tull’s song ‘Aqualung’ came into mind. At once, in heart’s flight, I was cheered and felt a sense of dread. We are almost making it to spring while at the same time ending used up on a doorstep somewhere. The feeling is one of reaching the goal, at the moment you are swept away by a last wave from the Ice Princess. Are we going to have one last hacking cough and stillness as legacy?
There is much in the last year we have suffered through. Notwithstanding our history as humans and the daunting trials we have survived, It has been a deadly, hard year for the whole world wide. I think we are best to acknowledge that. It might be best to recognize the difficult time and that it still exists. Spring might be here but winter isn’t over yet. The vaccines are here but Covid isn’t over yet. Still, this day is hopeful. The sun promises that hardness has cycled toward a better time. Having a vaccine means that some return to community is on it’s way. A shift of season approaches. The changing season proves that future is still a thing and will become the present at some point. There is light but the brightness of obviously approaching spring is not simply cyclical this year. There could be an irony, too. We survived through this thing but as the cavalry rides in, we could collapse. We are exhausted, just at the moment of re-birth. While the time we are part of changes for the better, we might have used up everything to survive.
I am looking out my window and feeling that we almost made it. Of course, that’s an extreme sentiment, we will continue. There is more to see but the wholeness of spring is tarnished. It is a hollow spring I am witnessing. Joy has an edge to it. The coming season of growth/hope, the promise of prosperity are here and Aqualung lies used up on a doorstep somewhere. Our spirit, my spirit has bled out or remains frozen. Song is hushed, I have little energy for poem-writing. I find only commonplace when I search for the thread. I see the neighbours on their way about and don’t have a clue what is interesting about that. There is no visible aura of the greater picture, the humourous one. I don’t feel sparky. Spring is a so-what-ism.
The modern pandemic has changed living for human beings across the world. We were so close. We flew everywhere, landed there within hours. Locking down has forced us to see our oneness. We witness the common suffering of each other on our ipads/phones/tvs but those machines close us off from each other. Brought closer, separated…more irony. When we are ‘distanced’, our dailyness has a changed shape. Rather than being energized, we are made tired by the new ordinary way. We chat with each other, we sing, we continue but we are emaciated by the way we feed on the simplest joys. We are starving, with our spoons dipping in virtual pudding. It doesn’t satisfy. The computer doesn’t connect us, no matter our bit-rate, no matter the height of the definition. Something dry flashes across the back-lit screen. The artificial, the reproduced is missing body heat. In my own experience of chatting with friends, attending funerals, singing in cyberspace, there is dryness and crackling noise. I was struggling to hear nuance from the accompanying piano when trying to sing or trying to take my piano lesson. It just ain’t as alive as live.
The promise of Spring is glowing there, right outside my window. It is a promise and not yet reality but that is enough to get by and to lift the gloom. Experience tells that winter will end and sooner than later. Good. Covid is a thing we have little experience of. In 1917 or so, the pandemic flu dissipated and daily life returned to normal. I would like to believe that such a thing is possible with our new pandemic. I am not so sure it will be. Maybe our lives will return but it will be different. The vaccines arrived but Aqualung had his last gasp, I fear. Vaccines are sloshing over the sides of the health care bucket but Zoom and Facetime will stay awhile longer, taking up the brightness and air. Our discontented winter ain’t over yet. Ah well…
Robert On The Air 