Out of the Quiet of the Tomb

Not as quiet as you would think. My wife and I both work from home, which means the telephones are ringing and pinging and the laptops are Zooming, making a racket for which our gratitude recently has been refreshed, while the security system announces the presence of deliverymen at the door a couple of times each day, and the local landscaping crews — who will labor ceaselessly through the Apocalypse itself — are running their mowers and edgers and leaf-blowers (the most obnoxious, and perhaps most typical, of all modern American conveniences), and the local commercial traffic of cars and trucks, distant trains, and airplanes keeps up a low-level background roar, and the imperious little dachshund, who regards us all as household servants, bangs on her little steel water bowl like a jailbird in some 1950s prison movie.