Nothing Means Something (redux)

The victims were not drawn from the elites. The earliest surviving epistle asks: What of compassion? During the time of plague: What of abnegation?

The outsider is to blame for the epidemic… expulsion, exodus… divine agency…

The Oracle’s response was for a call of bones. Bones? Human bone. Recover the bones of Hesiod.

In the face of pestilential adversity call societies to bind together. The summer heat brings severe pestilence… prepare to honor thy gods.

The gods are called upon when a pestilence is particularly severe — a special intercession is necessary if we are completely overcome with superstitious dread.

Yet the flautist is ambivalent. Pagan entertainment to appease the gods is failed invective for those that are deaf and unseeing.

Syntax and meaning are useless.

Nothing means something.

Consult the sibylline books and hold a thanksgiving feast.

Wait! was that a cough?

“The US is again at a point where an average of more than 2,000 people die of Covid-19 every day”

— CNN.com headline, 22 September 2021