Hell?
In C S Lewis' book "The Great Divorce" (which must be a lifelong favorite, seeing over the years I've referred to it more than anything else I've ever read) the narrator opens the story wandering aimlessly in a place that always reminds me of a shabby, depressing deteriorating, boarded-over warehouse district of seemingly endless Los Angeles, the most depressing place I've ever been. In my years in business, from Navy retirement in 1978 up until moving from Harrisburg to Apalachicola in 1984, I was away from home on business fully 75% to 80% of my Time. Much was in WashDC, where I loved and enjoyed two anglo-catholic parishes and a charismatic parish, and later went to seminary; but a significant part was in my car and on planes, West Coast cities, mostly Los Angeles where, on behalf of my Australian and Canadian clients, I was involved with defense industry firms, especially aerospace manufacturers.
Okay, I'm wandering again, it's my want, take me or leave me! My point was the dreariness of Los Angeles (the interior, not the wonderful Pacific coast area).
Anyway, in "The Great Divorce", the narrator opens the story wandering alone in the half-light of Either almost but not yet dawn Or almost but never quite evening, in a seemingly hostile and furtive place, in an unpleasant, chill, perpetual damp mist. It goes on forever - - which was how Los Angeles always felt to me when, in my Lincoln Towncar rented from Budget for $29.95 a day no mileage limit, I would start driving east to see where the damned and godforsaken city ended, but never got there. LA doesn't end, it just goes on and on and on.
Or Yeats, wretchedly miserable and unbearably homesick as he wanders the cement sidewalks of London in chill drizzle, and comes to him "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree".
In the sky overhead, the narrator can see stars, some closer than others, all of them slowly receding into outer darkness. As it turns out, and you will remember that the narrator soon finds out the place he is wandering is actually Hell, each receding star is the remote colony outpost of an extreme loner like me, for whom Hell was not aloneness enough: s/he had to get even further away from all that is, seen and unseen, alone and for all Eternity (remember, "The Great Divorce" is after-life, there's no Time anymore) drifting ever farther into blackness, infinitely away from God and all other beings.
There's a lot other to the tale, the receding "stars" is just an incidental mention, but it keeps coming to mind in my own Time of covid19 isolation. I don't go anywhere except as absolutely necessary. Down the stairs and out into the park for a lone walk this morning. The HarbourVillage HOA has the side gate into Oaks by the Bay Park chained and padlocked, so I can't go out that pleasant way. Otherwise, not even going out to church on Sundays unless I was preaching; thankfully that's eased off now that Sunday School has started up again. We order essentials online. Expenses have dropped noticeably. Grocery store but occasionally. Never (possibly ever again?) to a restaurant. Never ever into an infection-infested hospital to visit folks who need a pastoral visit. Just us and the passing ships. Maybe shrimp boats at night, private boats back and forth between here and Shell Island on weekends. This place H.Village was already, in "normal times", so quiet and private that one seldom/never ran into other people, and more so nowadays, but now if the elevator door opens between Level 7 and "G" (garage or ground), the waiting, anonymously masked person will not get in the elevator with you, declines, saying they'll wait for the next elevator. Fine by me.
Beyond social-distancing, in this new covid19 era, life has become not simply unsocial, but antisocial as we wait for the New Normal, not realizing that We are there. People pass in the night, but not too close. Southerners, we are not NewYorkers, we still speak to strangers, greet with a word or nod in passing. I don't know what "generation" I was in, they never "christened" us with a cute designation; but there are the Baby-boomers, Generation-Xers, Generation-Y, what will the covid19 generation be called? Not that there will ever be a post-covid19 era, I'm afraid it's here to stay.
Looking back, this reads depressing, but it's not depressing at all, and not MEANT to be depressing, it's just observant. Read C S Lewis, "The Great Divorce" again, you'll see what I mean, it isn't depressing, it's tongue-in-cheek adventure. Mean, irritable chip-on-the-shoulder ghosts get into arguments and pick fights on the overnight bus from Hell to Heaven. Not spirits, but ghosts, unreal, transparent, colorless, anonymous NonBeings keeping our distance. Hell, maybe this IS Hell. If so, it's my own 7th Heaven, not bad after all: I'll take it over fire and wind and rain!
TW+
bulk cargo vessel TS Alpha making for Studstrup, Denmark with wood pellets.
Reasonably educated, I know that the titles of books should be in italics, not quotation marks; but Blogger is so goofed up that using italics nearly always changes type-size/font-size to tiny little smallest, so I've given up on it!
+Time is not meant to be a public discussion forum on Facebook, in fact, I changed +Time and the nature and frequency of my blogposts for the duration because it seemed to be becoming that. We are all different, and I do not want to ruin friendships or family relationships just because my social and political convictions are 180° out from almost everyone I know and love. So, for the duration I'm mostly silent "personally". However, starting yesterday, and continuing provided I remember, the last line on my +Time posts will be my email address in case anyone wants to say anything. I do not commit to respond, and if I do not, don't take it personally.