So now darkness again engulfs our land. Both nature and our national mood are in awkward, involuntary harmony. Winter is well upon us. Days shorter, the dark lingers, giving way to pallid belated dawn light. Soon, no government decree or virtual ankle bracelet will be required to incarcerate us in our homes and isolate us physically from our fellow citizens, and obliterate the little platoons that provide the foundation of civil society.
Nature is taking its cadenced course. Those yellow woods that inspired Robert Frost’s beautiful reflection as to whether we actually choose our destiny or whether it chooses us are receding in the face of a sudden chill in the southeast.
We are now abruptly catapulted into the depth of winter and another tedious lockdown. Already alpine regions, ablaze what seems mere moments ago, are dusted with heavy snow. When beggars die no comets are seen. But when the foundations of societies quake, time itself seems to warp and the orderly seasons forsake their rhythm. Last Christmas seems an eternity ago. Life before lockdown seems as quaint as flared pants and the Little River Band. But if nature is sending humans a message, maybe it is more optimistic than that propagated by Extinction Rebellion. A large asteroid sped past this week. It missed us by 3.5 million miles.
I am chalking that one up as a win for humans after a dire run since November last year. Sure, in the context of the times it is the equivalent of beating the eighth-ranked team in my third-grade competition when they could assemble only six players. But as our indefatigably optimistic coach would have concluded, “Reckon we turned the corner with this one. Could just feel it, boys.”
Indeed, had I known in advance, I might have glued myself to the road at the appointed time and shouted with a glee befitting the relief of Mafeking as it transited on its way to decimate lesser stars. But, sadly, there are no cars on the roads. My ostentatious stance on behalf of our species would have gone unnoticed by all but my postman. “The isolation finally got to the poor sad cow. Always seemed a bit strange.”
Moreover, to my discredit I learned of our near miss only after it had occurred, thus dashing my hopes of dedicating my acceptance speech at the Logies to denouncing humans for wantonly bringing this catastrophe upon our fragile planet.
Yet to every time under heaven there is a season. And now nature itself is imposing confinement and introspection. At least that it is how it has felt to me in the cold, gloomy lockdown bubble this week. Be assured, dear readers, there are plenty of quiet Australians in this affluent city. Not all are insulated against the metaphorical chill winds blowing through the economy, this writer included.
Certainly, many in lucrative public sector employment have been spared the ravages of what has been termed euphemistically economic “hibernation”. Bears hibernate in winter. Businesses die. Metaphorical bears depress markets. In the real world people lose dignity, hope and meaning when their work is abruptly stripped from them. The line between literal and metaphorical death is narrowing as our nation seems to be suspended between natural seasons and its passage through this pandemic to some version of normality.
As with any death, the passing leaves broken hearts, shattered dreams and human potential extinguished before it achieved full bloom. Many, in isolation, will share Frost’s sense of autumnal grief as they reflect on paths not taken. Would a safer office job have preserved their marriage or avoided the foreclosure on their mortgage? Was their pursuit of their creative passion a folly that now condemns them to poverty in mid-life? Should they have settled for the secure job in a commonwealth department rather than taking a risk on autonomy in the private sector? Was escaping the toxic boss to start their own small business a quixotic blunder?
Enforced isolation and unemployment leave plenty of time to ponder these questions, and others as well. The big, important questions, as Inspector Morse told his offsider, Lewis, in that poignant scene in the final episode, titled The Remorseful Day, of the popular series. Life. Death. And regret. As the waning sun “ensanguines the sky”, far too many of us have more time than money. We have time for repentance at leisure rather than leisure itself. No holidays. No sport. No hope.
Frost expressed it best in writing that we “shall be telling this with a sigh, Somewhere, ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less travelled by and that has made all the difference”.
We chose a drastic response to the pandemic. But for every physical symptom avoided, a mental toll has been exacted. Unlike the billions in debt it defies rational or precise calculation, though Adam Creighton in the Australian newspaper has been rigorous in reminding us that in “flattening the curve” we flattened much of society as well. My own neighbourhood already reveals the scars. Pubs closed. Restaurants and cafes shuttered. With the elapse of each day the likelihood that they will reopen decreases.
One little business run by a beautiful family from Cambodia had already closed after sustaining severe hail damage in the violent storm in January. I had breakfast there every day that I was in Canberra for seven years and regarded them as extended family. I loved them. Watched their little kids grow up to take their place behind the counter. Helped the son with his school assignment, which comprised delivering a speech as prime minister. He passed — just. Yet I did not even know their last names. And I miss them and grieve for those simple pleasures I took for granted and that imbued routine daily life with ritualistic meaning.
They have disappeared along with the other patrons with whom I shared banter about cricket and politics on a daily basis. Little platoons on which larger communities are built. The real people who put the flesh on the bones of the metaphysical assertion that no human being is an island. Again, none of us even knew the last names or occupations of the others. All gone. Dispersed. Perhaps scurrying furtively to buy takeaway coffees through narrow slit windows from masked strangers. Or striding joylessly around the streets without a sideways glance to expand their respiratory capacity to enhance their chances on the ventilator.
I spent much of last year grappling with depression and contemplating self-extinction. Just think. I nearly missed all of this!
This week one news network captured the essence of this strange time. Images of deserted landmark streets in Sydney drifted across the screen accompanied by the haunting instrumental strains of Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence. Aptly, that melody is planted in my brain as the anthem of a youth receding into the mists of crowded memory. It was taken from their album Wednesday Morning, 3AM. That is the time when uninvited spectral visitors disturb our sleep. I don’t know about you, but I never awake at 3am to plan my next holiday or to conjure with memories of a sunset ensanguining the sky, into the West away.
No, 3am is the hour of reckoning with regrets for the past, and for jousting with anxiety about the future. Regrets about that Road Not Taken in that yellowed wood. And, right now, many, many Australians are besieged by such unbidden anxieties. All our material progress swept aside by an invisible disease.
Depression is the term being applied to our likely economic trajectory. I am not an economist; I am a writer. So, each evening, like Simon & Garfunkel, I turn my collar to the cold and damp and wander around the empty streets. It is eerie and depressing. The grainy black-and-white images of the Depression era actually convey more action and congestion than our socially isolated hibernation of 2021.
Hence, I derive almost childish pleasure from the odd balcony light display. It seems an almost grand gesture of defiance of the pervasive sombre gloom. Gallant railing against the dying of the light.
If I did not face jail for causing temporary overcrowding and infringing social-distancing restrictions I would love to knock on the owners’ doors, embrace them and thank them profusely for lighting up the funereal darkness; for affirming vibrant life and offering a beacon of hope to passing strangers.
Again, Frost was no stranger to the darkness and loneliness of city life. He wrestled nocturnal demons and they inspired some of his most beautiful work. Thank goodness he did not deal with his sense of isolation by deciding to learn Spanish online or train for a virtual triathlon in his lounge room. As he wrote:
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain — and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Like it or not we are all becoming too well acquainted with the night. When will some semblance of normality return? I know among most of my mates the lustre of home-based work has rapidly worn off. Among many of my peers the reality and the grief finally settled on them this week. And most of them at least have some form of income and an assured place to sleep.
The full economic impact has not yet been felt. Those most vulnerable to the virus can be classified with some precision. Those who succumb to despair may pass invisibly from our midst. And not even their loved ones can gather to bid them farewell.
We shall indeed in ages hence look back on this time and sigh.
