A Perhaps Weekly Pandemic Periodical, #1

The strangest thing how quickly it can all change.

I know this neighborhood of Shannondale, situated on the cusp of Jefferson County, already the easternmost in West Virginia, a once-mountain-cabin-weekend-getaway with a man-made lake turned bedroom-community for Washington, D.C., is an off the radar sort of place, a Hillbilly Villa, a rural pastimes island amid the farmland being cultivated into developments, as well as more than a bit late in the swirl of events and closures and shutdowns sweeping from one end of the globe to the next. But the world's finally arrived and this is the end of my family's first week in what is by all signals likely to become our new norm: staying at home.

Letters to the Void, #6

Dear Void,

This one's a doozie. We start with memory and knowledge.

Memory: as in the ones in our head and which we speak and communicate and hold as in suspension among family members and even society as a whole, and Knowledge: as in what is spoken, written, collected, gathered, tabulated and learned through long years of experience and stored, amassed, treasured, disseminated, or otherwise passed on.

Letters to the Void, #5

Central region of the Carina nebula

Dear Void,

Where do our memories go?

Something tells me, dear Void, that you have an answer...

I can remember so many, many things. From trivial math to the sensation of jumping into a river. From the sound of my baby crying to the sight of corpses lined up in rows. From the smell of burning plastic to the typical rum sound my car makes such that when it makes any other sound except its typical sound I am immediately alert and questioning just what the hell could be wrong with my car now.

Letters to the Void, #4

Dear Void,

Sometimes it's hard to remember you're there. For some, every day is a hustle, for others it's a game of survival, for yet more, every day is sweet, relaxing and/or largely a repeat of the day before. Still, in each of our respective day-to-day existences, your existence, dear Void, as broad and all-encompassing as it is, may not entirely relevant.

You're pretty distant, y'know.

But sometimes all it takes is a story to remind us that you're still there, that indeed you've always been there.