August 7, 2021: Blinded by the blue

August 7, 2021: Blinded by the blue. The brightness of the clear sky always amazes me. The sky seems to be always blue here. As I sat on my familiar spot surrounded by the magnolia and the pines I looked up and was again struck by how the very special signature blue. There is a clarity in the air that seems almost artificial. Far from the maddening crowd, perhaps, because the silence of the morning is shattered by the mechanized mowers that seem to incessantly cut the grass creating an artificial pristine surrounding. Everything needs to be controlled. Systematized. Made boring. The excitement of discovery, the inherent tension of avoiding the Zomato driver as the scooters speed by on both sides of the car is replaced by a discipline that still cannot rein in the numbers that seem to be skyrocketing in some parts. Like a year ago, we are back to the unhappy and unbelievable place where the politics of masking seem to be back in full force. The simple reality of protection of the community is again jeopardized by a sense of entitlement and confusion where a misplaced sense of “freedom” trumps the good of the community. The blue sky offers a deceptive notion of tranquility as the virus is free to spread riding on the myth of normality. Days are lazy here. Mostly “slow news days.” Nothing happens that seems to interfere with the Andy Griffith-like reality that many want to recapture. But seems ephemeral. There was some excitement eventually as bondhus gathered and we took apart the victory at the Olympics. The way it happened and the stories that are being built about the victory. The rise to glory from modest rural backgrounds. There is euphoria tempered with the knowledge that much had to be done to reach this end. We talked, as the night and the afternoon progressed. Just the banter. People who are comfortable with each other, known each other for years, and could just open up and talk of nothing that really matters. Seinfeld – a show about nothing. Those who remember. This is important and made possible by COVID-19. We don’t seem to talk about that much more. Everyone knows that the waves will come and go, a physicist explained the analogy with the waves of the ocean. How some crests are higher, and others are lower. Depends on how many gets infected. The special slumber of a body responding to light when it should be dark, or hunger after a good meal, slowly overcomes and a relatively eventless day comes to a close, prematurely. To begin again in an untimely way when the body wants light, but it is dark all around. “Alexa..” Give me light. An untimely snack, and slumber again. While there is statis in everybody who surrounds me, I struggle through different times and await another pristine blue sky, as Pat Canavan said, “Underneath a Carolina Blue sky.”