Not friendy looking, needs a haircut

Governor Cuomo mandated wearing masks.

I am aware that this sentence could suffice as the first line of a young adult novel about a teenage uprising.

I had been wearing them already. I understood the direction that public heath winds would blow, but I was not thrilled at this in practice. For one, my lungs rebelled when I wore masks while running. Officials acknowledge that wearing them while cycling is unnecessary suicide if one doesn't slow down.

I am made uneasy by this all. It was not that I wear a mask outside, but that this suggestion had to be made. We tread closer to a world I would not have imagined a year ago and cannot predict now. When my backlog of podcasts talks about how good they hope 2020 will be--or mentions how Millennials have no reason to be nihilists because nothing bad will ever happen to them or assures the listener that a pandemic is vanishing unlikely in our future--I cringe. Most of these recordings come from the 2019 holiday season, so not half a year ago. I want to travel back to this more innocent time and warn them of their hubris.

I'm little different from them. If you told me years ago that there would be a pandemic whose spread was facilitated by a jabbering reality show embarrassment and his cadre of bootlickers and relations, cheered by a minority who protest containment because they want to get their nails done and buy fishing tackle, it would have registered as hyperbolic satire. Even Transmetropolitan was subtler. (It Can't Happen Here, though cleaving eerily close to aspects of Trump's rise, did not think to add "the president is so arrogant that he expresses pride that his ineptitude might only kill a hundred thousand of this citizens and advocates that his followers, who are supposed to be obeying the national state of emergency, should take up arms to liberate their states from their governors.")

Cuomo's mask edict is not a great shock. Once Cuomo began giving his daily briefings a month ago, it would soon come to this. Unlike Trump's televised campaign rallies, Cuomo's briefings are factual. He takes responsibility for his actions and their possible repercussions. Whatever else I may feel about Cuomo, he is upfront. I believe he is doing what is best for the state, though I admit to frustration that his PAUSE order has been extended to May 15th.

I accept that I should wear a mask. It is the next mandate I worry about and the one after, whatever these might be. I still do not see a clear end. I saw an article stating that some experts do not think there will be concerts and festivals before autumn of 2021. It makes complete sense and I hate it. One cannot enjoy a concert with a mask and social distancing.

Amber says, had she known this would happen, she would have seen friends more often. I tell her that I will remember she had said this and will hold her to it, should we rediscovered socializing someday. She shrugs, not that she thinks I won't remember this, but that she feels free to contradict.

My friend Emily Ree, the author of Anarchy Dreamers, instructs children about history. She made a comic explaining that--after years of consulting documents of those living through history, they now have the unenviable privilege to themselves create these. Their letters, their diaries detailing the months of sheltering against a pandemic, are now crucial to the historical record.

Will anything I've written be held up to this light?

After 9/11, I had a masochistic fetish for finding blogs, forum posts, and webcomics reacting to the shock of it. Irreverent and indecent sites turned for a little while uncomfortably sincere and patriotic. We struggled to work out how to cope with the enormity. I reread too often one forum thread on a snarky news aggregator, witnessing the attacks happen to them all over again, pinpointing the exact second the towers fell for them. When I found this site frozen in amber, we were all too aware that we had lived through history. For the authors of these comments, there were frozen minutes where it might only have been a tragic accident the next news cycle would forget.

In COVID-19, there is no one comment I can point to when I knew that I was again living through a circumstance that would redefine all that would come after. I cannot find the moment just before this, where we were... not innocent, surely, but not yet laden with this burden. We may return to something like the world before, though the protocols of this month-long sheltering will linger. (Time's Person of the Year will be essential workers. Dictionary.com's Word of the Year will be "flatten the curve.") We may go somewhere better, having learned generalizable lessons from this trauma, though I would not place my bet on this. Or we could lean further toward the fascism that has made itself clear in the world, insecure authoritarians using our fear to seize more power. It is what we seem to find most familiar.

For the sake of the historical record, Donald Trump declared that the office of the president has absolute power, which Pence echoed, calling it plenary. To their credit, most reporters, constitutional scholars, and laypeople met this with a resounding "The president does not have absolute power. You are thinking of a king. We don't have one of those. America fought a war about this. It was a big deal." This declaration was otherwise relegated to memes. The news moved onto some other outrage that fell like infectious spittle from Trump's mouth as he demanded an insurrection against the United States, because lessening the spread of a pandemic is hurting the stock market in an election year.

He boasts that he won't wear a mask but putting a muzzle on him would do much to help America.

People become less courteous behind masks. It is nothing conscious, but we have come to assume the masked might be about to rob us. Behind a mask, we are less accountable for the things we say or do. We wear masks to prevent others from breathing infectious particulates, but how can we trust someone who doesn't even have the decency to show their face?

A little anonymity goes a long way. Where I had before been able to convey my patience and tolerance with a smile, I am now visually muted. Even verbally, as my cloth mask muffles my voice enough that I must repeat myself with broad explanatory gestures. The rules of this world change in days. On my bi-monthly trip, the grocery store has arrows we must abide by and red dots on which we must wait our turn at the checkout. These are simple to understand, though some people in the store, a few unmasked, are indifferent to them. I place an item on the belt before the last customer--done with her transaction and fumbling with her purse--has left the bagging area. The cashier chastises at me, followed by another scolding by her manager. There was no posted sign that this was now the law. They expected I would intuit the etiquette of one week prior.

I pull out my reusable bags. The cashier snarls that I must bag my own groceries, which I always did anyway. I brightly tell her that I know that. She then grumbles that people are waiting for me to get out of there. It is only one woman, standing on the red dot after having been told off for putting an item on the belt.

As I leave, the cashier explodes into an unprompted rant to a coworker about how parents who bring their children to the grocery store need to be arrested. This is not her attempt at exaggeration but a deeply held belief with copious evidence.

The next time I shop, I do not know that I will be allowed in the store. I will not mind.

I cannot imagine how nerve-racking it must be for the cashier to work now. I would be tense and irritable in her shoes and cannot much blame her for her masked demeanor.

Given my mask, I dress more conspicuously. I would otherwise give little attention to what I wore to buy tomatoes and beans. Now, I am rarely out when I am not exercising. It is worth the excuse to dress in something more than thermals and exercise pants. My outfit must convey a personality that my face no longer can. I am uncertain that my sparkly goat pin reading "Hail Yourself" succeeded, though.

How will these affect communication a year from now? Ads for more fashionable masks have bombarded me online. I admit to nearly being swayed to buy one, except that would mean I acknowledged that we were in for a long haul. I appreciated getting a simple, black cloth mask from my parents in the mail. Surgical masks and bandanas were less flattering and comfortable. Will masks become part of our identities? For a decade, Americans have chortled behind their hands at masked Japanese citizens, but we are keen to forget our hypocrisy. We still wear ties, garments that serve no functional purpose. Who can say we won't bedazzle masks with our names or consider one underdressed in a formal setting without one?

Our tan lines will be fascinating come June--or would if most people I pass exercising were listening to the mandate. (There are whispers that there might be a fine attached to the proclamation, but nothing specific has been announced. It might only be a stern public shaming--and COVID-19--for infractions.) If people persist in congregating without masks, we will have months longer to practice wearing them. They will become no more comfortable in July heat.

Soon in Xenology: Magical thinking and witchcraft. Probably more about COVID-19, since, you know, the world is ending and everything.

last watched: Locke & Key
reading: The Eyre Affair