Mask Mandate Observations #2

On Long Island no one wore a mask outside. 

In New York, everyone wears a mask outside. 

Cities don't die like humans do, they die by changing. Look at Detroit, Istanbul, Rome. A city is less defined by its structures as it is by the people who inhabit those structures. 

The mask mandate is for pussies (excuse my language), and even the toughest New Yorkers are afraid enough of popular opinion--and the cold stares of strangers-- to comply with its hypocrisy. 

Badass vigilantes are supposed to wear masks, but it is gay and laughable to see Candidate Sliwa's Guardian Angels wearing mandated masks. Being tough is not wearing a mask! Exposing your likeness to the cold stares of strangers and staring right back is the new tough.

(Also, you're not 'tough' if you vocally shame the only person not wearing a mask on the subway; you're a bully with popular support.)

For a city in which everyone lives on top of (or inside of) everyone else and nobody knows their neighbors, anonymity and confidentiality are taken to an ironic and unprecedented extreme. Clueless city propaganda even urges riders against talking to others on the subway--an inclination we never had! What are we protecting again? Our health or our likeness?

(For this reason, I don't even want to be earn the title of "New Yorker" anymore. The term is more descriptive of a Bangladeshi civil servant who owns three houses in Queens, or a wasteful avocado-toast hipster yuppie who owns no property than it does a hardboiled mobster, old school Tammany Hall Dem or even fratboy banker (they've all left the city to work via zoom). I am a Long Islander. I like Billy Joel. I eat mollusks. I am white. My Italian grandparents fled the city in the 40s and never looked back, and I shall continue this tradition.)

Upon my return to the Pandemic State of New New York I have seen untold thousands. When I meet Pandemic New New Yorkers (~22 of which have become fixtures in my life to varying degrees) their faces are hidden. Of those 22, I have never seen the faces of 13 of them. (The remaining 9 I have seen only in pictures, or on zoom.)

Some people want to protect their precious lungs from breathing the air we all share, so they never remove their mask in public, preferring to breathe their own mask breath instead. 

This is as disgusting as sneezing in your own bowl of cereal. But if that is the choice one wants to make I will judge and condemn with a special levity, especially if I have grown in fondness with repeated interactions. 

It's All About Me

I am selfish, and the mask mandate is personal. Is it really asking too much to want to know what my friends look like?

When I introduce myself I yank the mask down past my chin to show my face, so as not to disappoint when they spy my face and find me more charming than handsome. (No one ever asks to see  my face.)

Sometimes I get the feeling that my new friends/acquaintances don't want me to know what they look like. On one such occasion during a lengthy and enjoyable conversation my area manager turned around to remove his mask and take a sip of his Monster energy drink. 

Another time, the girl at Mass pulled her mask away from her chin with just enough space to receive the eucharistic wafer, making the only chance of seeing entire face a disappointment.

Once I entered the Director of Operations office and her back was turned from me. She did not have her mask on, and feeling my presence behind her, put it on before turning to face me. Rote or safety or needlessly protecting entirety of her likeness from my semi-curious stare? (Some people look better with a mask on.)

My behavior is subtly impacted by theirs:

Walking into the lunchroom one shift I saw Adolfo masklessly eating his lunch and diverted my eyes without saying hello, like I'd walked in on him on using the toilet.

Other times I hold my gaze longer than necessary to catch a glimpse of a chin or a lip or a cheek, like I am a pubescent middle schooler sneaking a peak at a bent over girl. 

At Planned Parenthood one morning, I had an hour-and-a-half conversation with a girl my age. I was maskless--though my eyes were hidden behind sunglasses--and she was masked. At the 7 minute mark I gave my name and asked hers (she refused it); at the 23 minute mark I asked again and she easily reciprocated. At the 44 minute mark she ripped off her masked exclaiming 'I like talking to you! This is what I look like!' to which I responded by taking my sunglasses off to reveal my own teary eyes. 

Overcoming the oppressive mandate and without succumbing to nakedness we had achieved true intimacy.

The eyes may be windows to the soul, but New New Yorkers are missing all of the good (and necessary) stuff around the eyes. I felt like a hack wearing those sunglasses--if it wasn't so sunny I'd have taken them off.

Such cursory observations make "the mask" the longest and most widespread social experiment in human history, not a preventative measure against the spread of a flu with a 99% survival rate.

True Kinship

At heart, I've always been a beggar. 

I can recall, with a shameful fondness, begging my friends at our high school lunch table for their lunch scraps. (My friends had awesome lunches.) Because I'd grown up with them, I was comfortable shamelessly begging from them knowing that they liked me for my quirks, not despite them.

Annoyed, they rarely gave me what I begged for, intensifying my desires and leading me to entertaining all sorts of other evils later on in life. Without the bumpers of their stinginess to stop me, my gluttony, like my ego, became insatiable. 

(I don't blame them. (But I do digress.))

As I left shelter one beautiful afternoon in the present day, I pulled my sunglasses from my pocket and my pen fell out with it. 

A derelict man, too impoverished for a phone, sat on the curb in front of me. Unable to share his early Spring experience on Facebook or Insta, he was forced to enjoy the sunshine for what it was worth. Like the ancients before him, he was thereby attuned to the world, and upon seeing my pen touch the parking lot he croaked, pointing: "Hey your thing."

"Ah, thank you!" I responded with glee, bending over, cautious not to be too friendly as to inspire a conversation, the sunshine barely warming my soul to pity his. 

"Cigarette for 50 cents?" he asked, as I moved away from him and on to my life on the mainland while he remained fixed to that curb and transfixed by the sun. 

I wondered if this was an example of an ethical dilemma as I turned to take him up on his generously unsolicited offer. The day did indeed inspire a cigarette in me, and I was hoping he had menthols....then I'd realized that he was soliciting me for a cigarette, and not the other way around. 

Feeling a new kinship with my clientele, I continued to the bus, content in the knowledge that everything was in its right place; I was finally among my own kind. 

a prelude to some future meditations on evil

A friend recommended Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem and I read it mainly for its subtitle On the banality of evil. 

If well written, the book was very boring, focusing more on Eichmann's war crimes (which are boring) than the psychology of the banality of his evil. Maybe Arendt got there psychologically, but I didn't have the patience to read another 100 pages of boring political insights. (Reading the intro and a couple of Goodreads reviews was enough.)

As I resurfaced from the abyss of an addiction last week my entire life has been brought into focus by the truthfulness of evil as banal, specifically how the evil of my past actions have covertly played a major role in the misshpaing of my life. 

When midterms end--and if I don't succumb to my addiction again--then I can exhume these mysteries, bringing to light the evils that hoped to be shrouded forever.

Mask Mandate: Year One

Editor's Note: I wrote this wearing a mask.

In rushing somewhere I felt the icy cold on my face and with shock exclaimed out loud 'my mask!'

Then with a mental dexterity for which I am not accustomed, I thought 'No, not 'mine' as I climbed the stairs to my apartment to retrieve it with bitter resignation, grumbling "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's..."

There has not been a new opinion on the mask mandate since The Great Quarantine of 2020 began, and I am not going to reiterate my obvious dislike/disproval of it. 

Instead, I am going to make an observation (those are fun!): 

In March 2020, it was 'Don't go outside without a mask.' In March 2021 it is 'Don't go outside without your mask.'

The mask is no longer the 'new' normal. On the first anniversary, it is now simply normal; it has become 'yours' and 'mine.' (They even got me to say it!) For some, the mask has become so personal that it is like a Guardian Angel needed at all times to protect our precious lives. For others, it is a shirt that we must wear over our face, so why not customize it? The 'classic' blue mask is just a liner; wear something that more fits your personality! Make it your own! 

Now I need to stay vigilant in the oppositional language (while still using 'cancelled' insults). In the very least my language--and eventual sentiment--is not changing without me noticing first. (Though still begrudgingly changing.)

So long as it is forced on me it is an impersonal alien, a tumor, a parasite. It is a facehugger. I'd rather have the Coronavirus than wear it. (I couldn't help but give my opinion anyway! Sorry!)

This just happened

Ward’s Island lived up to my fears. But, having survived dipping my toes in its human sights and smells, I was given the opportunity to leave early, which I took.

My trip to work from the Island was a silent one: no headphones, no book, no phone to distract me. Instead, the cacophony of the city mixed with the observation of tired, broken, enslaved New Yorkers; a preferrable accompaniment to my pensive mood.

When I got out of the subway at 28th Street I saw a ‘Made in NY’ production truck. This made me laugh and grin like a teeny tiny leprechaun was tickling me beneath my suit, reminded of a time not too long ago, when I was enslaved by the same industry.

With my miraculous escape came a surprising sense of pride that seeing this truck elicited: a pride in outgrowing the need to work “in the field I’d studied,” and ironically, a pride in the newfound humility of knowing my proper place in the world.

Then the thought that was really on my mind came to the fore: “I wonder if my ex-girlfriend is working on this show.”

Turning the corner answered my question.

There she was turned to face the direction of the wardrobe truck (or was it costumes?) in a group of four other female colleagues, all wearing masks. But a mask can never conceal a person’s spirit. I passed behind her, studying her ponytail, her posture, her double masking, her goggle-like glasses, my obvious investigative stares impossible to suppress.

Then I stopped on the corner to get my bearings and check the address of my worksite.

The Moment

With my bearings gotten, I poorly feigned a need to turn around. She stood where I’d passed her, about fifty feet away beside her colleague, staring me down, her arms crossed. ‘Oh,’ I thought. ‘She sensed it too.’

The Very Next Moment

Having another image of an ex-girlfriend sighting now burned into my memory (albeit this one is very much preferable to the last one seven years prior), I (again) poorly feigned seeing through her, then walked down the street, passing production vehicles, the norm of mask wearing crew members and endless hampers full of infinite cable, all serving as reminders of a previous life long gone.

Pontification ;)

Once I passed through the production, I felt the fullness of my racing heart. With it I imagined acting differently in the moment…I imagined waving to her. She was staring, there is no denying that she also saw me. I know she would have waved back. It would have been a sign of peace, possibly reconciliation.

But it also would have been acknowledgement, and acknowledgement is painful.

For acknowledgment of a past long gone recalls memories. Memories unearth emotions. In this case, it recalls memories of joy, and the subsequent—and permanent—loss of that earthly joy. And loss cannot be felt if not first for love.

Feelings can be hurt, and love can be buried in self-protection, but once created, love can never be destroyed. (I am talking about more than the emotion.)

Her decision to willfully face me will be a mystery. (Defiance? Curiosity?) But its foundation, though denied by the proud-- and for reasons as varied as there are unique humans on earth--is love. (I speak to proud people for a living; I know the signs.)

And when paths unexpectedly cross, love, unexpectedly remembered, is rekindled. Albeit never in the form it once took. (Depending on the relationship it could take the form of forgiveness.)

“I don’t love him anymore,” can be more truthfully replaced with “I don’t love him in that way anymore,” becasue there will always be that hope for the good for the other. It is emotions that make acknowledgment of truth this blunt impossibly, painfully incomprehensible to utter aloud. (It is truth nonetheless.) But, as humans are in a fallen state, and for the sake of a new love’s pride (and to avoid them feeling envy) the former statement is more tactful, if not completely true. (Also, unnecessary to mention at all.)

This crossing was providential, with my schedule changing just slightly enough to make this occurrence possible. And yet, I still wonder at God’s mysterious purpose for crossing our paths today. Did I not learn enough of my lesson from the last time my path crossed with an ex-girlfriend? (I certainly did not learn my lesson after my first arrest.) I understand justice--and envy--better now than I did two years ago when I broke up with her, and maybe that was her purpose in my life? (I did not want it to be! That lesson suuuuuuuucked. Sometimes the only way to get though to someone is with an avoidable tragedy.)

So many questions that my soul must now unexpectedly seek the answers for! Why now?

Regardless, I must give myself up to the mysteries of God’s will, putting my faith in the purpose of this untimely sighting. Having a sense of humor about it helps too, as does looping  Michelini's Frolic' in my head.