Dear me from the past,
The world will end, as worlds often
do. The sight of blue surgical
face masks tossed carelessly on lawns, and blowing forlornly on dirty streets,
will become a familiar one. You will see white masks too, like shot doves,
under cars, flung on tree branches, stuck like fugitives against chain-link
fences, and this will remind you of a tragic final seen in a war movie.
Speaking of which, movie theatres will become a wistful memory.
The world as you once knew it will end, and you will realize -
despite everything - how safe you were, and how in a blink of an eye, you’ll
never feel that safe again, ever. The mammoth threat of the pandemic will dwarf
every other superficial fear you once had. A tsunami you can’t close your door
against, or climb the highest mountain to escape; a blind, indiscriminate hurricane
that sweeps everything in its wake.
In this world, a staggering number of deaths will be reported
mundanely every morning, and you’ll casually turn your eyes away from the news,
numb. In this world people will become even more distant, physically and
emotionally; they will avoid each other like the plague (pun intended), eyeing
each other with suspicion and hostility.
In this world you’ll regret squandering all those places; the
pleasure of walking the corridors of an art museum and contemplating beauty,
the ease in which you dined at restaurants, and met friends at cafes, the
chatter and noise of beaches, parks, gyms, malls, bars, parties, stations,
fairs, airports, and parades.
Once you settle into this new foreign world, once it becomes normal,
as strange new worlds often do, you will remember a time “before” quarantine,
and you will add it to the list of “befores” you’ve collected. Before it was
normal to take off shoes, belts, and jewelry at an airport. Before it was
normal to see terrorists behead innocent people. Before it was normal to see a
great whale washed ashore with tons of human garbage exploding from its gut. Before
you saw a white cop kneel on the neck of a black man so many times, it stops making
you flinch.
