The Triumph of Death

The Triumph of Death (1562) by Brueghel the Elder

The pandemic has shrunk the world. It’s a kind of Esperanto or universal language that's finally done what the great hope of modern technology failed to do—that is to create one unifying culture. Experiencing an illness creates the kind of intimacy that soldiers in battle feel for the comrades in their platoon. Despite all the culture wars, humankind is finally sharing something, going through something together. Will Isis and the Taliban, who hate each other  declare a truce during which they dealwith the problems  Afghanistan must be facing in combatting Covid-19? When and if the virus ever recedes then everyone can get back to killing each other and wandering through the devastated terrain that's the legacy of the climate change. Fires, floods and massive devastation from tornadoes have become the accompaniment of a scenario that's worthy of great paens to mortality like Brueghel’s Triumph of Death.

Read "Obit" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Canon in D" by Pachelbel