Day 614, March 8, 2022

Unmasked

Today was the last day of mandatory masks. Tomorrow we will see people’s faces. We will have to cover our mouths when we cough and check doubly for errant nose hairs and lackadaisical shaving. This seems
like something momentous to document in this space I have been inhabiting. Each day I order a falafel wrap, I save the paper bag it comes in, and in my office, I line them up, each with its own KN95 mask. At the start of a day, I rotate a mask in the bag, and draw a mask out. I read about this craziness at some point in the pandemic, and it seemed like a simple thing to do. I also have emergency surgical masks in my car glove box. I have two masks in sealed packages in my laptop bag. I have one individually wrapped KN95 in my jacket pocket, in case I lose the one I am wearing. I wonder who will continue to wear their masks, and who will not. I wonder if we will marvel at each other’s faces, each other’s facial expressions… if our smiles have changed. There is something comforting, after all these days, about wearing a mask. It feels like a small measure of agency within the overwhelming tidal wave of the pandemic. How much longer will I count the days? In the news is how COVID affects the loss of matter in the brain, and in a news choreographed synchronicity, there is also an article about leaded gas from the 1960s and 1970s affecting our IQ scores. An entire generation reduced by a few points. I think we are all a little more tired than we once were. A little more wrinkled and creased. I look forward to the unmasked embrace of friends, to feel a stranger’s breath on my ear. This is what living is, is it not? An entire writhing humanity waiting to blow a kiss.

Found in the junk drawer. So close… yet, so far.