A Snapshot in the Age of Coronavirus

It feels as if events are happening too quickly to process them.

A week ago I'd have thought it was absurd to stay home from work, even as I washed my hands when necessary until the skin was cracked and bleeding, and tried to figure out how skin lotion could be applied antiseptically.

Now I'm working from home after weeks of debating with colleagues about the office's policy against remote work. I can't emphasize enough how bizarre this feels.

The roads below the room where I'm working are maybe a third more empty than usual — Sunday morning levels of traffic except at rush hour. With each pedestrian and cyclist whom I see I always wonder, are they really being prudent? Car music sounds louder, bird song easier to hear, the air I think a little lighter and less particle-filled, and brawling voices on the sidewalk permeate the windows more easily as do the buses and the ambulance sirens.

Going out to the grocery store does not appeal, normal though it may seem at every other time.

Firstly, I'd need to think out how to do it while keeping at a proper distance from others.

Secondly, I'm worried about seeing a William Hogarth-like picture of cupidity and greed in a city I'd felt happy in and proud of until Monday.

On Monday evening I went into the familiar chain store underneath my office. The leafy vegetables were largely vanished (lots of tomatoes remained), table sugar and flour gone, baked goods bins decimated. In the aisle that holds hygiene products, half of the shelves were bare and had paper signs taped to them that announced that supplies had temporarily run out.

At the cash register, the atmosphere was anxiety mixed with boisterousness.

Everyone was in a hurry, or in a state of giddy frivolity that made me angry, e.g. planning to buy lots of beer to drink with pals. The cashier was calm enough on the outside. But the way she was hyperaware of the indeed perturbing, loud roaring of a man near the drugstore on the other side of the street, revealed that her nerves, too, were on edge.

Later on, once I'd left the store, I almost cried because I felt that the crisis-management-by-consumption was so degrading and now began to find it sad. Then I walked home for two hours to avoid public transit.

It's strict and yet a little weak-spirited of me, but I don't want to see those grocery scenes again.

Anyway, the best consolation I've found — aside from fluffy and harmless distractions I find, and jokes — is the levelheadedness of people I know personally and of many people whom I don't, and especially the companionship of the people I like best. (Although Papa is missing.)

What I'm still trying to figure out is my duty to others, aside from staying home and not becoming a carrier of the virus. Maybe I'll also be able to sleep properly again. Lately I've been anxious enough to wake up even before 7 a.m.