These streets are depleted but not empty, and the silence is anything but oppressive. For all that, in the viral city there is such a sense of endlessly receding meaning. Everything is vivid, pregnant, a receptacle eager to be filled with meaning, with something, and if the revelation has not yet come there is a growing intimation, one that we must cultivate, that this absence is an invitation. We have not been passed by: this is an opportunity.

"These moments are always weird and contradictory. The government’s approval ratings remain higher than they’ve been in years, even as national rage grows, in this moment of uncanny suspension, of watching, like specimens in formalin, staring out in the long light at unspeakably beautiful planeless skies, breathing cleaner air and hearing giddily bickering animals, and your held breath feels as if it might emerge as a shout. You laugh too long and hard, your temper’s short, your tongue feels thick in your mouth."

>"‘That after so many years of feeling that some Event was due, that something vast must surely happen, something vast happened. Is happening.’"

>"‘That after so many years of feeling that some Event was due, that something vast must surely happen, something vast happened. Is happening.’"

Fascinatingly.