The Quietest Day in America

Today will be the quietest day in America in a century.  

I can't prove that, I don't know how anyone could. I don't know the stat I could pull to demonstrate it.  But it seems fairly logical to me.  

It's Saturday, a day when most Americans don't have to go to work.  Of course this is a vast generalization, especially in today's shared economy (whatever that really means), but go with me.  

On Saturdays many folks don't have to sit bolt upright with a start first thing at the sound of an alarm clock or iPhone zen bells, or kids shuffling before school or whatever the selected (or imposed) method of consciousness applies.  So it's a bit more quiet than other days.  On top of this, Saturdays are typically characterized for many by physical activities: lots of sports, on tv, in the stands, at kid soccer fields, in other places.  And today, there is no sport in America.  That's pretty clear.  

All professional sport leagues have either suspended play or cancelled their seasons outright.  Has that ever happened?  Ever?  Another stat I won't look up, but you have to imagine not.  All kids sports, AYSO, gymnastics, park play even, seem to have been suspended until further notice relegating parents no doubt (like me) to wonder about homebound activities and pre-negotiating Fortnight terms like a UN denuclearization deal.  

Permits for gatherings of all kinds have been suspended by local municipalities, city and state governments.  Assemblies in general, church services most peculiarly among them, which have been limited to 250 people (a fairly arbitrary number... is 245 safer? Or 255 more dangerous? I guess statistically... mathematically yes, but c'mon) have yielded the net result of folks not gathering even in smaller groups... or gathering at all.  

The few people I've seen here in LA; around the block in my neighborhood, or at the store last night when I ran out to buy dog food for my two English bull dogs (who like at all other times remain blissfully, sleepily unaware of the world's illogic) looked at me in a way I have not ever perceived.  They looked at me with a glint of inherent distrust.  An ever-so-small-but-still-perceptible trigger of self-preservation.  An instinct perhaps deep inside all of us, dug up from the depth of DNA from Australopithecus parents back in the Pliocene who had to fend off others for food...  Could it be?  Hope not, but it gave me a chill.

In any case, there is no sport.

There's not even people working out.  In LA.  Has that ever happened?  No one at the gyms, boxes, studios, labs, rings, facilities, dojos, centers, or whatever the du jour terminology commands depending on the activity.  

It's very, very quiet.  

Of course, the weather, a (very early) 'June gloom' which has cast a gray pall over the whole of Southern California, adds to the sense of surrealism. 

I can hear the occasional airplane lifting off or touching down at LAX and I wonder who those folks are; given the cratering of the airline industry in the last 24 hours I'd posit some crazy combination of thrifty wanderlusters, thrill-seeking cheap skates, trapped business execs, emergency travelers and the employees of airlines and airports themselves... I suppose.  I heard that some planes have flown empty in the last 48 hours just to keep the gates at the airports from closing and bringing to a grinding halt that domino effect of descending and ascending planes in the air space.  Not sure if that's true.  You hear things.  

So what to do?  

Write a long blog entry while your family sleeps?  Sure.  Pray?  Absolutely.  Meditate?  If that's your thing. Go for a walk and really LOOK at things?  Smell the air?  Yes.  Look at colors and textures, almost for the first time?  Absolutely.  Hear music?  MUSIC? (which perhaps you realize you've abandoned for the likes of business podcasts, or worse). 100%.  Appreciate all we truly have - even when things have been taken away?  Yes.  Especially this.

This is a time for us to walk in the desert.  All of us.  

Do you know what the desert is?  It's beautiful, but dangerous.  Still, but vibrant.  Desolate but alive. It is a burden but it is always a gift.  It clarifies and brings into sharp, nearly-blinding relief the things that matter.  It does this almost instantly and with a penetrating honesty that takes your breath away.

In the desert, we survive through presence.  

We live in the moment.  

We breathe carefully and with appreciation.  

We have the opportunity to truly see.  We have a chance to really hear. 

Let us not forego this great gift we've been given.

Charlie Echeverry - 3.14.2020