My return to work, and the busy autumn term preparations, were interrupted by a tiny virus, a semi-living organism (no, lets say, a chemical) that has now held me inside these walls for four days in a row. While flu or mild influenza is sort of ridiculous disease in its non-seriousness, it can put you mood for thinking. If we are deprived of the control of our body, if our consciousness is clouded by pain, what we are? Where are we? Is there time any more? What about sense, direction?
Is there a self, someone to carry and continue the significance, any more?
Silence. Detached from all our contacts, there are no longer contours for our existence, and nothing to feed thoughts and passions into the space, flow of action, that used to be us. A release of a sorts, viruses can be perhaps thought of as little wise men, those teachers of being and nothingness. Nanoscale Zen masters.
