maybe mezzo

In huggier times, funnily enough in Durham! I have noticed that when major events happen in my life, currently the Coronavirus epidemic, my first reaction is to stop and be still. I wait quietly and try and hear something. It's as if I am listening for a signal. When I look back in my life, I have always done it. I do it even more when surrounded by noise. When Princess Diana died I was in London the day after and I walked to Buckingham Palace where although there were crowds of people, there was an eerie silence; everybody lost in their own thoughts. And that's a phrase we use isn't it?  We are all silenced by events that are devastating - think 9/11 - and then the noise comes as we try and make sense of it.  Is that inner quiet space the sound of us meeting ourselves? It must be the moment where we try and process the enormity of the impact and work out how we proceed, if it is safe to do so, what the cost might be. It is probably textbook psychology. The current crisis h...