Thinking Or Suffering

Thinking is seaman's chore in calm oceans, not the seagul's noise. You need the right condition to avoid sublimation-- a house burned down by a mob needs practicing generosity. Thinking of suffering in pandemic is itself an act of suffering, needing resuscitation. Start with masks on the dead without coffins, truck-loads of bodies, with no where to go, ghosts of doctors exiting to cheering crowd, ambulances screeching to a halt, melting urban hot zones and infectious rural alarms. You need the right condition to survive thinking of suffering, the wailing in hospital hallways, the hungry and the food banks, the mothers and bored infants, poorly-clad nurses teeming with pride. Pandemic has foisted new thinking on future survival, not trips to Niagra Falls. Thinking is luxury of living, not mortgaged by the dead, and suffering in thinking is legacy of the dead. Before the pandemic thinking was an easy kill by TV and internet, now pegged to a killer surge. Ask for the roots of suffering and you never get it right, xenophobia's order of the day and thinking in despair. I think therefore I am – infected with fear and dread. I suffer, therefore I am.