By Maryanna Gabriel 

    Making silly rhymes (as in my last post) may be a strategy to lighten the mood, but I’m not the only one. The ladies at the local café were dead set against discussing the shifts going on globally. However, the news gets through eventually, and one must be mature about it.

    But not today. I don’t mean the mature part; I mean the news part.

    It is an intensely hot Saturday, as in wilting, and for no apparent reason, as I write, we are in the middle of a power failure. As a result, the neighbourhood is uncannily quiet, which I’m really enjoying. I swear there is a buzz that vanishes when the grid goes down. I don’t even know it’s there, but when it is gone, it feels so much more relaxing in a subtle sort of way. Less of an energy drain. Maybe it is the fact that the internet not working as well. An inner news is broadcasting more noticeably.

    The energy that was our world in childhood feels closer, when a Saturday morning meant comics, bikes, and popsicles. Funny how you don’t know what you have so much of the time until it’s gone.