“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,
Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt,
It lies behind stars and under hills,
And empty holes it fills,
It comes first and follows after,
Ends life, kills laughter.”― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
The watery white stuffy is finally disappearing and still I was very happy as I woke up today. The fog was clasping all the building hiding the hideous structures from my site. I could only see the white fog and the icy treetops. Usually, I am not a fan of naked trees, but the ice gave them an elegant evening dress somewhat highlighting them in the mist.
No sound to be heard. For a moment I felt peace in the quiet of the morning. For a moment I was all alone. No annoying neighbours, no screaming children, just the silence of a cold winter day. As the sounds of my environment started slowly humming in the distance, a feeling of loneliness nuzzled me. It is hard to stay strong all the time and even though we do not have to, it seems like, with time, we develop two personalities. The one which keeps us functioning no matter what and the other one, we try to repress. The lockdown is enhancing this separation, leading us to a better understanding of what Gollum must have felt like.
We are on the third run. Like a bad trip, it seems like it is never going to end. The vaccine is being the holy grail. We think it will solve all our problems, in the meantime, people are not being heard. Politicians are so busy with damage repair; they cannot keep up. Meanwhile people leaving alone are being abandoned. “Deal with it yourself” is the new slogan of society. We are being ordered to stay at home to avoid contact with other people unless we must go to work. Apparently seeing people at work does not expose you to the virus but doing fun things like going out or to the cinema are. Clearly, they are trying to reduce the overall cases, but they are slowly transforming us into working machines. Work, work, work, work, work and on the weekend no fun.
We can use the time we have at our disposal to improve ourselves but honestly, there is only so much improvement one can do without a break. What is life without the possibility of fun? What is life without the soft touch of a loved one? What is life with a tight hug of a friend?
A month ago, I started a new job, meaning I am not allowed to work from home. I understand the trust issue, even though one can see if you are working or not from the results you are producing, still it sounds like I can only be allowed to stay safe if I would have been working for them for a longer period of time. One could argue that they have better control over my working hours if I am at the office, but not if I am sitting alone there. I just cannot seem to grasp the logic of the thinking process many people are having during these tough times.
Like Gollum I am mutating to a version of me only focussed on one thing, work, which gives me precious money. Money I can use to order stuff online, I do not need. Just to fill the void in my heart. An while my friends are moving on with their lives, making changes, moving away, starting new things, they are forgetting me, slowly leaving me behind. And as I talk to myself in the mirror, with big eyes and unwashed hairs, I wish I had something so important to me to hold on; like Gollum had. His precious, which kept him alive.
Aromatic deception 