New patterns emerge without a pattern. As millions hunker in their bunkers, swans return to canals in Venice, Himalayan summits become visible from Delhi for the first time in thirty years, and seismographs become more accurate because everyone’s at home instead of rumbling around. Seriously: check it out!
Yup, everyone’s home cleaning out basements, testing new jello molds, and mostly building brick patios. Which leads everyone from both sides of both aisles to finally recognize that life is like a brick patio on a bed of sand in a pandemic.
It’s perfectly obvious.
Bricks are porous and come in many sizes. Each one is unique. They are like snowflakes, but heavier and six-sided, and they don’t melt in summer. They can be cut to fit if you don’t mind the screaming saw, the clingy orange clouds of dust, and the dizzy pressure of measuring correctly.
Sand dries out quickly. Sand likes to drift in the wind. Sand packs up tightly, but you have to keep your eye on it. It’ll flop around given half a chance. Sand is not dirt. Sand is a zillion tiny rocks, and each rolls with the others. Dirt is dirty. Dirt stays wet and clumpy. Sand stays dry and sifty, and sand is clean.
Dry bricks, wet sand. Crazy wannabe patio stuff.
So, obviously, life is crazy like a brick patio. Unique, rigid, six-sided cubes snuggle into temporary eternity with malleable, drifty waves of grains.
Unless they don’t.
Not exactly on task.
Yet evocative, nonetheless.
Fictionary Friday: Words You Need. Whether you know it or not.
Quektivist(kweck tiv isst) Noun: One who asks whether or not an activity makes sense.
In a sentence: Without pausing to engage in even moderate quektivism, Mann Eyickcal began to pound sand.
Wikipedia Friday Favorite: In honor of the intersection of curiosity and logarithmically expanding human knowledge, we offer a weekly favorite obscure Wikipedia page.
Fizzdom Friday: from our collection of favorite quotes.
"Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble." – Arab Proverb
Flossophy of Fongress Library: As many of us creep into dark, scraggly, uncharted headspace, our Staff Librarian goes hyper-optimistic.
Friday Fluff: Your stay-at-home grooming options can be enhanced by this "Essential Business". Hurry down to buy your orange beauty supplies before the administration confiscates them ahead of tomorrow's press briefing.
