Pandemic Journal 27/3/2020 – only connect

This pandemic, like a dark bird of history pierced the thin membrane of our personal world. Ripped open we feel the call of friends lost and and found. Their voices sound in our dreams. We bear witness to our loss. Our bounty. And reach across to others. ...In this new era, COVID-19 time, this impulse to connect, an essential element in our well-being, is enabled by our digital technology. Isolated in our homes or wherever we find ourselves, connections stretch out the minutes of our day into a zone of contemporaneous aliveness. We humans peer at each other through machines. Our bodies relax or contort into awkward postures scrunched down on a chair - or standing, our weight on one foot, at the sink.

A Ghazal for the Dead – a University of Alberta memorial for flight PS752

A very sad occasion. The UofAlberta memorial to those who lost their lives in the deadly Tehran crash on January 8, 2020. I have felt grief-stricken by the hate and cruelty, the loss of life. So I was glad to attend with my neighbour, friend, and colleague - a wonderful young woman Zohreh and her beautiful family. The space overflowed with fellow mourners.