March 22: Dire Reports, Albert Camus, Poem from "Kyrie"

It has been a long day of further dire reports.  Deaths and confirmed cases rising in the United States.  More governors ordering their citizens to shelter in place.  It hasn't happened in my home state of Michigan yet.  I'm expecting it in the next 24 hours, however.  The National Guard has already been mobilized.

What does that mean?  It means we are all supposed to stay home.  Only go out for absolute necessities.  We can go grocery shopping.  Pick up medications at the pharmacy.  Go to doctor's appointments or the hospital.  Fill up our cars at the gas station.  Other than that, stay inside, away from everyone else.

Albert Camus, author of the novel The Plague, once wrote, "There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night."  We are in a time of shadow right now, where all the news is full of darkness.  Some people think this whole pandemic is a media-driven panic.  It's not.  Some people think it's the fault of one political party.  It's not.  Some people try to blame a specific country.  They're wrong.

All the epidemiologists have been warning us about this eventuality for years.  Years.  It was just a matter of time.  The citizens of the world were simply going about their businesses, blissfully ignorant of this impending threat.  I was one of those citizens.  Can't be ignorant anymore.

So, as we all get ready to shelter in place, remember that placing blame does not help.  Could the leaders of this country have done better.  Absolutely.  Could we, the inhabitants of the United States, help to prevent the spread of darkness?  Absolutely.  We are all in this together.  

Lives are going to be lost.  Loved ones.  Neighbors.  Everyone will be touched by the Covid-19 virus in some way.  The world will be a different place in three months' time.  The world is a different place already.  But the sun will eventually return, because shadow can't exist without it.  Until that time, we all are going to become better acquainted with the night.

Here's another poem from Ellen Bryant Voigt's Kyrie.  It's sort of about light and darkness.  How art is used to try to satisfy and soothe unhappiness.  I turn to poetry in times of night.  Other people, to music or painting.  

Night is falling right now.  I'm looking out the window from where I'm stationed at the hospital.  The light is slowly leeching away.  Before I leave, it will be completely dark.  

Saint Marty will look for some stars on the way home.

from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

The temperament of an artist but no art.

Papa got a piano just for her,

she used him best, made all the sisters try.

We rode the mule to lessons, birds on a branch--

you know what it meant to have your own piano?

Next, guitar.  Then painting in pastels--

she stitched herself a smock, sketched a cow

she tied to the fence by the fringe of its tail, braided

the tail the cow left hanging there.  Unschooled

in dance, too scornful of embroidery,

she seized on marriage like a lump of clay.

A husband is not clay.  Unhappiness

I think can sap your health.  Though by those lights

there's no good reason why I've lived this long.