Lockdown, Vol 4 - Part Six, Virtual P.E.

Yes, all classes are online. Even P.E. 

Lockdown, Vol 4 - Part Five, The Hawk and the Squirrel

The kids and I were finishing up the last episode of the Mandalorian when Elise called up from the second floor, "Hey, guys! There is a hawk in the backyard!"

We paused the show and all raced down three flights of stairs. Sure enough, a hawk stood in our small patch of backyard, a squirrel pinned beneath its talons. 

The bird wasn't large. The crow perched on the wall above it, looking on with envy, was bigger. But it was majestic. It pulled muscle and entrails and tufts of fur from the squirrel's corpse with its hooked beak. We looked on in amazement, certain the hawk could see us watching through the glass. 

Eventually, we lost interest and returned to the show. When I returned some time later, the hawk was gone. No trace of the squirrel, not a bone, was left behind. 

The days are starting (or continue) to run together. The lockdown is about to enter its sixth week. We're now being told it will lift on October 1 because a high-ranking Sri Lankan dignitary has a wedding to attend on October 2. We'll see. I've gotten my hopes up before. 

We received two new jigsaw puzzles in the mail. Clementine already finished one. The puzzle pieces are scattered, littering the floor of Elise's studio, apropos of something, our state of mind, our state of being. 

It is as difficult to write about lockdown as it is to live through it. We wonder what this will do to the kids. I mostly believe there was never any guarantee their formative years would be anything like mine or Elise’s any more than out formative years were anything like our parents'. We made that even less likely when we moved to Brazil. 

Last night, we finished dinner early and went to the recreation center, the only place we are allowed to go outside of the house. It was a blustery night, unusual for Colombo, and the wind whipped the palms. Further out, you could imagine the sea lifting fishing boats and depositing them on the shore. 

The kids rode their scooters up and down the drive in the dark, beneath the halogen parking lot bulbs, bats flapping in the night sky overhead. Elise and I walked around the tennis court, hand in hand, intermittent rain splattering our foreheads. We walked small, repetitive circles around the perimeter of the court. After some time, Sam joined us and held my hand. A little later, Clementine did the same and held Elise's hand, and we walked that way a few more times around the court like a search and rescue team, all hand in hand, unsure of who or what we were looking for. 

Lockdown, Vol 4 - Part Four, Making Noise for the Sake of Making Noise

It was quiet. Soulshatteringly, dispiritingly, deathly quiet.

Elise took Peter and Clementine to the recreation center for online school today for a change of scenery. There, they could get a little social interaction, ride scooters on their breaks, and even take a dip in the pool at lunch. 

Sam and I stayed home. It was disturbingly quiet. Most days are filled with an unending onslaught of noise. Kids fighting, crying, screaming and shouting, Peter blasting, Star Wars cartoons raining laser fire and brimstone from the TV room, random bird calls, chipmunks that chatter constantly outside the window in the garden, construction noise from next door, the whine of circular saws and the thud-thud-thud of viscous globs of plaster smacking the skylight, cars racing up and down our lane, the garbage truck blasting it's horn that sounds like an air raid siren, the incessant ringing of the doorbell by beggars looking for money, the infuriating twinkle of "It’s a Small World After All" from the bread tuk meandering the city. 

The kids make noise for the sake of making noise, random humming, the inharmonius mimic of a homemade kazoo, moaning, screeching from behind laptop computers in response to nothing, to no one in particular. 

I'm more likely to see a mastodon march through our living room than experience a moment of quiet. Then, when it does come, it is so disconcerting, so disquieting, to be upsetting. 

The lockdown has been extended for two more weeks. Until October 1.

It's hard to feel any more disappointment. One would have to have hopes to feel disappointment. Some days are better than others. Today is Friday. Thankfully. Today is a pretty good day. Thankfully. 

This lockdown has been the most difficult of the four to navigate emotionally. Much of the city continues to function normally. There is traffic. There are people out and about. There is no enforcement of the lockdown, yet my office keeps us holed up in our homes save for an hour and a half per day at the recreation center. The kids can't go to school. Elise and I have been sneaking out before the sun gets up to run the same mile loop around the block. We can't travel outside of Colombo or leave the city. I think if we hadn't already been playing this game for a year and a half, we'd be in a better place. 

This time around, it is having to make a sacrifice no else is willing to make to get the kids back in school that is the most discouraging. We keep asking kids to make these sacrifices to keep the vulnerable, infirm, and elderly safe. But now that those populations are largely  vaccinated, no one is willing to make those same sacrifices for the kids who have offered up so much already. 

Yesterday, Elise accused me of having 'parenting fatigue'. It's a hurtful diagnosis but probably not inaccurate. Last weekend, we played a rousing game of water polo. Lots of noise. Lots of making noise for the sake of making noise. Maybe that's how we'll survive this. We'll scream and cry and fight and laugh our way out if it. 

Lots of noise. 

Lockdown, Vol 4 - Part Three, Dunamancy

Dunamancy is a type of magic unique to the world of Exandria. At its core, dunamancy is magic that commands the power of potentiality and actuality. These concepts are to metaphysics and potential energy and kinetic energy are to real-life physics; dunamancy grants its practitioners power over things that could be. Dunamancers draw power from alternate timelines and unseen realities, subtly affect the flow of time, and even tighten or loosen the grip of gravity. 

Exandria exists on the Material (or physical plane) although it features connections to other planes of existence, such as the portals to the elemental planes guarded by the Ashari, a multiracial tribe who care for the four elements: air, earth, fire and water. 

If you couldn't tell the kids are back into D&D in a major way. This summer brought a slew of new friends to Colombo, many of whom are into the roleplaying game. The boys had a few of those friends over recently to create new characters, and they are planning to begin a new campaign soon. 

This morning, Clementine asked when Covid would be over, our own neverending campaign world.

Elise told her she read that it wouldn't end all at once. It would be like the sun setting, you wouldn't wake up one morning to realize Covid had been vanquished, but that it's retreat would be gradual; we wouldn't notice it's slow demise. We would just gradually feel its presence in our lives lessen little by little, day by day. 

I would be lying if I didn't say I wished to wake up on morning to a world without Covid, too. Reading about the dunamantic power to alter reality gave me some inspiration, no doubt. Alas, I have yet to master the skills necessary to sculpt reality or send the world down an alternate timeline where Covid doesn't exist. 

The lockdown continues, extended for a third week. Peter is more engaged in online school this year than he was last, and his efforts have afforded him the privilege to work from his room (in a bean bag chair on the floor instead of at his desk as I would prefer). Elise, Clem, and I were downstairs when we heard Peter call down from the second floor, "Uh... mom...there's a squirrel...."

"What?"

"There's a squirrel," he repeated calmly, almost nonchalantly. "There's a squirrel in the house."

Evidently, a squirrel skittered across the floor by the door to his room. I came upstairs to investigate but couldn't find the squirrel. We did find what appeared to me a miniscule pellet of squirrel poo on the stairs, another in our bathroom, along with a tiny puddle of squirrel pee. 

What was most notable about the tiny intrusion was how matter-of-course everyone seemed to take the news. Clementine, who we fully expected to hop on a chair and start screeching, merely shrugged her shoulders and opined, "Maybe the squirrel had been inside all along?"

Though I have yet to become an accomplished dunamancer, others clearly have succeeded in bending reality to their will. Nefarious forces in Texas cast a wicked spell over the land, creating a realm as full of evil as if it were stalked by orcs and kobolds. 

This shouldn't be part of a partisan argument. What has happened in Texas has made Texans demonstrably less free, less equal, and less safe. What's next seat belt laws and motorcycle helmets? The state of Texas now has worse reproductive rights than India where it is not uncommon for women to have to sleep outside in a hut when menstruating. The lack of reaction -- to date -- from the Supreme Court is even more startling and will embolden the lawmakers in states with similar political agendas. I'm looking at you, Florida. 

To liken Texas lawmakers to a cabal manipulating arcane and sinister forces may seem tongue-in-cheek but this not Exandria. Living overseas, I enjoy a unique perspective on America, from the outside looking in. Those in glass houses should not throw stones, and I am often annoyed by others commenting on events in America. As a non-Texan, I am sensitive to this, too. But if your neighbors lawn is dying, then a smart person would prepare for their own lawn to begin to dry out, brown, and die.