THE LONG DARK TUNNEL

9 responses to “THE LONG DARK TUNNEL”

1. Robin

   August 1, 2021 at 2:51 am

   Love the way those groups of photos progressed. Highly effective. My darling Neil, hope you’re just having some creative, expressive fun and not truly down some long dark tunnel of the soul. If you are down there, we’re with you in empathy.

   Reply
   • ginzaintherain

     August 1, 2021 at 12:58 pm

     Hi Robin.

     Definitely out of the long dark tunnel, but this was filmed while still very much in the middle of it (did you click on the videos?). It was actually very cathartic just going to these morbid places in the middle of the dank rainy season. Poison + poison. Sometimes I just have to go there : the tunnel is a famously haunted one in Zushi – there is an old crematorium on the roof, and although it was a pretty creepy thing to do – people were agog driving past, probably now thinking they have actually seen THE ghost; there was something strange and palimpsest -like about layering myself over a real spectre. When I collapsed on the ground there I felt exquisitely peaceful for the first time in a long while.

     Reply
2. Robin

   August 1, 2021 at 8:13 am

   I’m reading about Japan’s extension/expansion of its state of emergency and the increasing number of infections there. Damn. Just glad you and D have had your two shots apiece. This isn’t the news I wanted to see. Probably not you guys either. Could this be your long dark tunnel, I wonder?

   Reply
   • ginzaintherain

     August 1, 2021 at 1:03 pm

     I have entered quite an ‘I’m alright Jack’ mode now. My anger has vastly diminished – I couldn’t have gone on being that furious all the time or I would have had a stroke. As long as those I care about have had the vaccine, everyone else can go to hell. People here won’t social distance or open windows so fuck them. I hate anti-vaxxers here, in the UK, in the USA, and everywhere else, and have no sympathy whatsoever if they get it. My patience has run out. I am not wearing a mask outside all the time – I just can’t any more; I need to breathe – it is so bloody LIBERATING to no longer feel that my students exhalations could lead to my demise. Why wouldn’t everyone want this feeling of freedom from constantly worrying about contracting a disease that could have terrible consequences for you? I know we could still get it, theoretically, but from everything I have read if that were the case it would be a mild version and I have no fear of that at all. SO happy to finally be protected! The feeling is so, so good. I feel almost like a different person.

     Reply
     • Robin

       August 2, 2021 at 2:23 am

       Sounds like you’re in the best possible mindset, N. — under the circumstances. Self-preservation is a good antidote to the ridiculous attitudes and behaviour out there, and really all we can realistically have control over.

       We haven’t had any cases on the Sunshine Coast for five whole weeks now. Hallelujah. The healthy majority of us are fully vaccinated and it seems as though most people are still wearing masks indoors, which makes more and more sense now we’ve been seeing what the Delta variant has been up to as far as viral load and potential for spreading despite immunization. But I don’t think any of us went so far as to wear masks outside even in the height of it all (unless we couldn’t keep a six foot distance from each other), when we were getting as many as 18 cases a week here (which still pales in comparison to most of the rest of the world). That would have just been too much. We are too fervently outdoorsy and trusting in clean fresh air to do something that restrictive and frankly unnecessary, given how much space we have and how few people.

       I agree with you. Why would people think that their personal freedom would be enhanced by refusing to embrace a simple jab that would give them the freedom from serious COVID symptoms and help their own communities stay safer? It’s so mind-bogglingly illogical. That’s what extremist ideologies do to measured and realistic thinking. That part drives me the craziest. And it even can boil down to just irresponsibility, apathy, immaturity. I read of one woman in Missouri, a mother of three sons 17 and under, in her thirties, who died from COVID after 50 days in hospital. Why didn’t she get vaccinated? She simply wasn’t afraid of COVID. According to her mom, “she didn’t think (contracting the virus) would ever happen to her.” I mean, WHAT?? That’s beyond ideology. That’s just wilful ignorance and/or reckless stupidity. That drives me crazier than extremes of political or religious belief.
     • ginzaintherain

       August 2, 2021 at 10:23 am

       Yes yes all of this: just reading about people who are in hospital with Covid AND REFUSE TO ACCEPT THAT THEY HAVE COVID.

       As you say, it is ‘mind-bogglingly illogical’, even though I wish there were a stronger phrase available – I think I said the same thing to D when we went for a dreamy walk yesterday around sunset. My anger levels have dissipated a lot, but there is still so much to be indignant about because ultimately, we are not totally selfish people but see humanity as a whole and want to correct wrongs. But as you say, there is only so much you can do. At the end of the day, you can’t really change people.
     • Robin

       August 2, 2021 at 11:47 am

       Nothing sounds better to me than you and D taking a dreamy walk around sunset. I can get so wound up about things going on out there, and not just to do with COVID. Ric is always bringing me back down to our sweet and loving reality here in The Creek. He just won’t allow himself to get wound up for his own self-preservation, because he’s extremely sensitive to the world’s various dysfunctions and would drive himself crazy if he did. I’m just crazy enough to sometimes work myself into an indignant frenzy about things utterly outside my sphere of influence. It’s stupid of me, really, or rather, pointless.
     • ginzaintherain

       August 2, 2021 at 1:18 pm

       I agree with both of you. I need to take on some of Ric’s self-preserving wisdom though, as I get into a malignant froth, whipping myself up into hysteria, AND IN PUBLIC. It’s time for a wind-down!
3. Robin

   August 2, 2021 at 2:49 am

   Or a refusal to believe scientific evidence.

   Reply

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