22 Jul 2020

Me From The Past




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.