Were you one of those millions of urban dwellers worldwide condemned to life in a box in a tower block, during the pandemic? Presumably millions in Europe -- Austria for a start -- still are. Did you resort to devices like this:
"Humans are designed by evolution for society, talk, interaction, for watching and mimicking others, criticizing, cajoling, encouraging, comforting in turn. Screen-life is no substitute; screen life is fake life. Depression stalks us now, tracking some folks down to their suicidal lairs. Or up to lethal tower block heights. How many, gazing out the tiny window, dream of jumping?
“Only go out for essentials” say the health officials. Here's what's essential: fresh air, movement, sunshine, night skies and the smell of leaves. Zooming is not essential, Google News is not essential. These are distractions, traps and diversions and in the end, corrosive.On the table in the sitting room squashed up against the bedroom of my box, I have built a miniature world. There's a castle, and a farm, a farmhouse and some trees made of twigs gleaned from the municipal park across town. A family – dream characters – lives in the farmhouse. A queen lives in the castle, as do her ladies-in-waiting, and lots of knights, her visitors of the night. In my night-visiting dreams I imagine their dramas unfolding, and the farm animals stirring, the owls watching, the earth of the miniature-landscape seething with microscopic life.
When the world shrinks we must make an inner world grow, the one we may reveal in miniature displays and the imagining mind. This is resilience … "
(See the whole article, "The Box and the Bubble", by Flora Jardine, at:
https://pagespineficshowcase.com
