For now, stillness of the country and the city are different beasts – Sydney Morning Herald

And now, the quiet of the country and the quiet of the city street are falling on either sides of the COVID-19 divide. Where you may be, the air of expectations, and reality, that wraps around your shoulders has a different feel to it. The wondering of what sound will break the silence distant calls or close shuddering rises in the day like a new dawn.
A checkpoint on the Calder Freeway.Credit:The Age
At this stage, Im still on the side of the lesser lockdown. If I drove a few kilometres south down the Calder Id enter the restricted zone, where people can leave home for but four reasons: shopping for food and supplies, medical care and care-giving, exercise and recreation, and study and work if they cant do it from home.
The air by necessity must carry less sound. The city and the suburbs are muted by this battle against an enemy we cannot see but in its victims. The silence is more than the absence of sound. It is the absence of life as we knew, and took for granted.
The angle of the light, the depth and breadth of the sky, the repose or restlessness of the mind all these merge into the quietude. Where the hustle and bustle once was, now the strangeness of less noise, and different rhythms, have insinuated themselves again.

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