The shrieks and screams of the school yard across the street broke into the midday
silence of my reading—a clear sign that summer holidays are over. I guess it’s time
to push forward my lunch break given the suddenly noisy purlieu. And I know that
my serious-minded friends discuss storms and wildfires or the ongoing woe of war
in Ukraine while all I do is obsess over the now disturbed quiet of my daily habits,
which is probably not a particularly favourable demeanour, but at least I don’t have
to worry about facing later some hapless casualty—whom I happen to call a friend
or family—of my momentary urge for publicly practised honesty, just because they
appeared in my stanza by chance. Self-absorption as a viable means of protecting
others—who would have thought?