“Quarantine Diaries,” by David Garyan (Day 35)

Quarantine Diaries – Day 35 April 18th, 2020

Trento, Italy

Setting Sights

A thousand waterfalls are always the same, and millions of them too. Like people speaking different languages, neither air rising from lungs, nor rivers falling from cliffs say something unique. All the flowers, massifs, and trees are identical— some are taller and some have strange colors, and a few may even be more beautiful than others, but if it’s firewood you need, none of that matters much. When flames are born, who says they're warm, and who names them inferno? But more aptly, from which point of view do you feel the warmth of infernos?

And it's the ugly mountains that often grant the best views, but who wants to climb a plain peak? And even the voice from above hardly matters when clouds have their say. Neither the Pacific nor the Sahara has any meaning for my trivial existence. No desert will shed a tear when I collapse, begging its sand to quench my thirst; every ocean will desert me if my lungs fill up with water; every mountain won't let me go if my lungs don't get enough air.

How do people live in a world they can have but never possess? The sun is a gift— in the morning it’s given, and at night taken away. Youth is a marriage with time that always ends in divorce. Old age will come in the end. It will grasp all that you have, including light and darkness— so that even fatigue can no longer belong to you then.