Justice

I think that life sucks. 

No really. I think that life really really sucks. And sucks is a word that personally offends my mother, more so than nearly any other word that escaped my lips as a child, so I do not use it lightly. 

(In retrospect, I should have played with harder words in my childhood. So many lost opportunities.)

Life sucks.

When a person is religious, a person can put that on God. Life sucks, but God is Good. There will be justice for the wicked, when God hears the blood of the slain crying out from the dust. And then one can walk away from the suckage, and put one's head back into the sand of one's existence, and manage to continue living through the horror that is humanity.

When a person is not religious, the blood of the slain cries out continually from the earth, and God does nothing. And the suckage, the pure unadulterated injustice of it all, can get overwhelming. 

And yet, looking around, I find that we are all stuck on this rock, spiraling around an inconsequential star, in a rather ordinary galaxy, somewhere not in the middle, not on the edge, but just towards the unimportant back left side of the vastness of a universe. And though we pour all our wickedness into the task of keeping the spark of life going on, in the end the effect is the same. The star will fade, the galaxy swirl into oblivion, and we are dust.

And therein is justice.

Screen time

It's been a year, guys. 

It's been a year since Tim canceled his trip to Vegas two days in advance. Almost a year since Victoria told the school kids to take an early holiday, and a late one, and then we'd figure out what to do next with this pandemic. Almost a year since the day I started working from home.

More than a year since I missed my trip to Germany. Much more than a year since we've visited family. 

Probably at least another year to go before international travel reaches us again.

***

Sometimes, a pandemic strikes and everyone is locked up inside and realizes that there is so much to do with screens and on screens. There is TV and social media and movies and video games and skype and zoom and blogs and news and online board games. 

And sometimes, a whole year of screens goes by and the headaches come and go, swimming in, swimming out, and you look around your world and decide a year is long enough for all those screens. 

Take more long walks, even though they are along the same paths over and over and over again.

Color. 

Cook. 

Play an instrument. 

Go outside. Sit on the bench in the park and watch the dogs run back and forth and back and forth. Birds. Soccer players. 

***

I live in a great place. My walks, along the same paths over and over and over again, are nice walks. This is home. I am home. Here is home, even though it is far away from extended family. 

We are doing ok. We are open. I am back to work, whenever I want to go, and home when I want to stay. There are restaurants and theaters and public transit and events, and they are all safe.

It hasn't been the year we thought it would be, but here, this year, there is much more hope in the world than here, last year. 

News from February

February is over. 

It was our last month of summer. It was a cold summer, though -- the coldest summer in ten years. The temperature hovered around 20 degrees Celsius most days, which is not quite warm enough for shorts and sandals and beach days. In the past, we've had at least a couple of days over 40 Celsius in the summer, but not this year. Even so, it was still a hotter than average summer, where the average is measured over all the years of record keeping. That makes me feel sorry for all those people who lived through much colder Melbourne summers way back in history. No beach days and keep your coat on all summer long. Oh well. No one has bothered to do anything about the climate, so at least next year should be back to record-breaking hot.

Besides the cold, a few other things happened in February.

 

Jonathan was back in school full time all month. Except just at Valentine's day. We had an outbreak of the super-contagious form of Covid-19 escape hotel quarantine, and so the state government snap locked-down the city without any advance notice for five days. The five days spanned the weekend, then Jonathan spent three days doing school from home. I was part-way through a five day online leadership training course anyway, so I was already locked down, tethered to my computer by my headset for the time period in question. I just got the whole city to join me. And Tim has spent the last 18 years essentially locked down, working from home, so he didn't even notice that anything had changed. Except there were more dishes in the sink, what with having Jonathan around for those three days.

In fact, in addition to messing up plans for Valentine's day, the five day snap-down also messed up year-12 camp plans. Jonathan had been scheduled to spend three days with his classmates at camp, running Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. With the lockdown through Wednesday, the camp got shortened. When the lockdown ended as expected Wednesday night, Jonathan was able to head off to camp Thursday morning for one night away. I dropped him off, and worked in my office on campus for the day. Then I went back Friday to pick him up.

Q: "How was camp, Jonathan?"

A: "It was fine, but I'm glad it was only two days and not three."

Since the snap lockdown, we have been virus free again. Jonathan has gone to school as normal. I have been taking the train with him at least once per week, and working from campus. It is different. Sunny. With campus people. We begin to think that life might be normal again, again. Whatever normal means.

February was also the month of the Great Australian Facebook Fiasco. Midway through the month, Facebook turned off all news coming in and out of Australia. Just on Facebook, and just Australia. It was good motivation to turn off social media for me. I have found, especially in the last four years, that Facebook is where you go to find out that your friends are total morons and you hate them. It is an angry place. I have decided that from now on, instead of going to Facebook, I will go to the park.