It might not be too soon to start thinking about Camus, if not thinking like Camus.

“All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.”

“What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves.”

“Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.”

The vast indifference of the sky…

That’s the term that comes first to mind. Of the sky? Just the sky? Only the sky?

A table of six next to me at the diner this morning, at least two generations and maybe three from the same family at the table… They discussed immigration and immigration laws in a particularly dispassionate way. They spoke like mathematicians taking turns laying out parts of a simple equation. There was no discernible feeling for the subjects of the discussion.

They moved quickly to how new laws would probably be enacted in reaction to this new Corona virus thing. Numbers of infected and dead were bandied about, again, with not even a hint of compassion or even fear. Most of these discussions include at least a bit of paranoia and racism. This conversation was simply clinical, like reading stats from the box scores in the sports section.

Curious.

I sat silent with my omelet and toast. The only noise from my table was the light clink of silverware on porcelain.

The conversation next to me moved to suicide, with the worst ways to do it and the most common places. A bridge near Cornell University, the NYC library, the Golden Gate Bridge and a few others. Should have been horrifying, right?

Nope.

Nothing.

Becoming inured to horror is a pestilence. Make no mistake there. I witnessed the vast indifference of the sky and under the sky.