It’s Sunday morning. The AQI (air quality index) is over 200 which is pretty much unhealthy for everyone. I think even the spiders at my house are dead. I’m sitting on my front porch anyways because, honestly—it seems like everything is out to get me right now.
Now, we’ve settled into an impenetrable whiteness, ash just aloft in the air waiting to settle. Fine particles of some else’s disaster making their way into our lungs. Luckily (?!?!), covid has prepared us all to wear masks. They are even more necessary now.
As I sit here, the quietness of the neighborhood is overwhelming. But then I hear it… the neighbors one street south. They’ve been playing music (on actual instruments) and singing throughout quarantine. I hear a low flute drift toward me, a haunting yet familiar melody. I hear a man’s voice maybe, but I can’t understand any words.
The neighbor’s music often includes a child playing the blocks, just banging away, but not this morning. It is on and off. Little snippets of song interrupt my thoughts as I wonder what could possibly go wrong this week to add to California’s problems. If Oregon will stop burning; if any of our beloved West Coast is really habitable at all.
Then it dawns on me as I begin to hum along. The song. It is “The Sound of Silence.”