A few weeks after the start of daylight saving, the winter gloom returned to lashes at the joy of this spring morning. Flooded my backyard with shadowless light and made me reminisce that the seasons have become a sprint, interrupted by their brief stay. They arrive only to pass a baton to the next phase with an indecisive visit. Always fleeting as if they have to be rather somewhere else. Some days when the sun is not hidden behind gray clouds, the wrath of her bright light confuses me as if I walked into a summer day. The sparkle and softness of spring mornings seem slippery— even the temperature of the breeze sway between a cold artic shrill and a baritone heavy summer fury. This morning I wore a heavy puffer jacket to shield the frail bones and lose skins on withering muscles. I looked at the weather app on my phone and immediately disagreed. It does not feel like spring! Last year was the same – a coat cuddled me until the desert-like heat engulfed the city I live in.
It’s my second such spring at home. For a little over a year, I have stayed at home to lessen a poorly understood pathogen’s mode of spread and the claws of devastation never before seen in human history. I remember correctly, though, and there is data to prove my conclusion that Bangladesh was spared last year. Unlike many countries of the world, it seemed they were excused with a minimal scar from the virus. They were lucky, only briefly. As we in the US now prepare to resume daily activities with moderate vigilance, Bangladeshis are dragged in to pay their dues to the pathogen’s altar with heavy death tolls. Mercy is not in its language. Its nature is different in that part of the world, and it consistently denied any regard to the victims for more than a few days. The patient starts to show symptoms one day, and by the same day next week, the relatives are busy burying the body six feet under.
As I stand under the weight of winter smirk on this spring morning, searching for an anchor of hope, the seasons abandoned their predictable charismatic beauty in exchange for a fluky behavior. The diseases mutated to become more lethal without any tolerance and mercy. With the loss of seasons and workable predictability for the future, the clock ticks away! My grip evermore feels like a skein! Anxieties strangled my gut; a thrump in my eardrum from accelerated heartbeats made me dizzy. Was it Neil Bohr’s uncertainty principle, mainly for the particles, that seems to show up in my meandering thoughts? If I knew where I am now, there is no guarantee where my momentum will take me in a few days in an undefined season in the west of the US. If I dare to believe where I will be, new geography perhaps not as blessed from the pathogen’s heinous attack, then I am not thankful about this spring morning because it seemed murky!
A panicked sensation of walking on a rocky terrain jostles me! It feels I am constantly failing to hold ground on the sand by an ocean. Everything is moving away – the tide towards an elusive horizon and the land I want to stand upon. Only an expanding universe remains faithful – hidden from my daily experiences. Like others, I am making a temporary mark on the sand of my being – what a reluctant awareness! These imprints are short sojourn until a tide of time effaces the ground, transform it anew. Many walked the same path and will do it inevitably. Until curiosity makes fellow travelers captive, forced to reflect on stipple portraits of the soul who was there before. A careful exploration of footprints on the bank only reveals the physical shape of a bygone era but merely a clue about the heart’s injuries. No fossil holds a memoir of the strains. Yet, no one could have escaped; no one is immune to entanglement, for the earth, the sand beneath constantly wavers.