But I Couldn’t See Her Face

As I walk through the center of town sipping my coffee, I can see the screaming blue sky reflected upon the tall glass buildings as the furious wind pushes ominous dark clouds across the wide open expanse. The days move quickly and yet they drag on like a conversation you’re dying to get out of but can’t. To be locked down is to be made very present, very apparent to yourself. There is no where to go and no where to hide from yourself and this in itself is exasperating. Scrolling through Twitter I see it’s the same cesspool it always is, only now made much worse because people are dying by the thousands every day and the more everyone talks about it the more despondent we all become. Yesterday I colored a rainbow on a piece of cardboard and hung it in the window. It’s supposed to bring joy, hope, and comfort to those passing by. We do little things like this in the face of big impossible terrible things because we feel small, we are aware now how small we actually are. Everything turns in on itself and points back to the place inside that hurts the most. I try to get out of my own head, that is one of the hardest things to do these days. I read novels to pass the time. There’s a girl on Instagram who posts pictures of herself everyday looking made up and sexy and I wonder where in the hell she gets the energy. I cycle through a daily uniform of hoodies and stretch pants and couldn’t be happier about it. I don’t remember what a bra even is or why I would ever wear one ever again. I can’t bear to think about ever going back to the office. Big corporations seem like giant monsters looming out there in the cold hard distance waiting to swallow us up again and remind us we are nothing, headed nowhere. Life feels suspended in a way I have never experienced before. I go to write but a fog rolls in over my brain and thick clouds of listlessness bloom through my chest and limbs. Black coffee. Chocolate. The Guardian. Slate. Vox. CNN. Washington Post. The Skimm. Late night comedians. Andrew Cuomo. Numbers. Faces. Ventilators. Curves. I have finished My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, about a fifteen year old girl who gets into a sexual relationship with her forty two year old English teacher at boarding school. Devastating, harrowing, brilliant, fascinating, painful. haunting, intimate, impossible to put down. It is fantastically well written, her debut novel. Took her eighteen years to write the thing and it is absolutely stunning. The story crawls into your veins and pulses through you days after you’ve finished reading it, it has a life of its own. Next up I will be reading Hiding In Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America by Sarah Kendzior, who spent her career studying the mechanics of the way authoritarian governments take control of democratic countries. I’ve only read the intro, but it all makes perfect sense. The fringes get pulled to the center, anything and everything is up for grabs. The law gets re-written to serve the desires of the wicked and corrupt. I don’t know how we get out of this. I don’t see it being pretty or easy or soon. For now, we go to the grocery store and scan the empty aisles, it’s like there’s a blizzard coming every week and the panic looks like rows and rows of white glossy shelves with nothing on them but orange price stickers announcing the cost of things you cannot buy. In the self check out lane there are trash magazines and gum and Lysol wipes on the counter. High above in the rafters there is a voice on loop over the radio waves: Help us keep our customers and essential workers safe, maintain at least a six foot distance between yourself and others at all times. The feminine voice is calm and detached. A young cashier watches me load my credit card into the machine, her eyes look tired, like they are asking me a question none of us can answer about hope and fear, almost pleading, as they smile at me from above her mask.