Past Phases: Re-Mask Mandate
Things got grim again around two weeks ago although it's all relative. Everyone in the world watched news footage of Afghanis clinging to a US military airplane on the tarmac about to leave the country, two bodies falling off in flight. All day walking around, strangers looked at each other and knew the other was thinking about the same things: What makes someone that desperate? What's my misery in comparison? How is September 11th almost 20 years ago already?
It was also the first gray day in Seattle after two record-breaking heat waves and the first bout of wildfire smoke. It was the re-masking mandates that clinched it though. On August 23rd, masks were mandated for public indoor spaces again because of the Delta variant of the virus. Some places are requiring proof of vaccination, even though our vaccine certificates are just dumb little pieces of paper. Meanwhile, hiking near Snoqualmie last weekend, on our way down the mountain, we noticed a crowd had gathered in the parking lot below. We could hear someone on a megaphone and rounds of rabid cheering, but we couldn't catch what they were saying except for a word or two ("...consent! ...freedom...!") and when we got closer, we could see they were waving American flags. It was an anti-vaxxer rally. This is the virus that has been with us all along, the phone-call from inside the house, the monster in our own basement. The foot of the mountains outside the city was where the rabble-rousing started in Iran too, which reminds me nothing is new.
There's a resignation about it all--a realization that we are still living, that this is it and we should make the most of it. Last year with the fall coming upon us, we still had the vaccine to look forward to. But now? Now what?
"Not sure when I'm getting married," The Ex texts from New York. "Sometime after life gets back to something resembling normal. Lots of aspects of normal social life are screwed up by covid. I chose not to tell you about my baby sooner because I knew your reaction would be negative and you'd make it all about you. Which you have. Yes, she was planned. Don't take everything so fucking personally. At this rate we're all going to die of some sort of supermutant coronavirus in the next 3-5 years. Hope I'm wrong. I'm not trying to be sideways with you."
I tell him I'm not upset, that I feel like I've dodged a bullet. "I do not envy you," I write spitefully, hating being spiteful.
And that is how the "Hot Vax Summer" went.
It was also the first gray day in Seattle after two record-breaking heat waves and the first bout of wildfire smoke. It was the re-masking mandates that clinched it though. On August 23rd, masks were mandated for public indoor spaces again because of the Delta variant of the virus. Some places are requiring proof of vaccination, even though our vaccine certificates are just dumb little pieces of paper. Meanwhile, hiking near Snoqualmie last weekend, on our way down the mountain, we noticed a crowd had gathered in the parking lot below. We could hear someone on a megaphone and rounds of rabid cheering, but we couldn't catch what they were saying except for a word or two ("...consent! ...freedom...!") and when we got closer, we could see they were waving American flags. It was an anti-vaxxer rally. This is the virus that has been with us all along, the phone-call from inside the house, the monster in our own basement. The foot of the mountains outside the city was where the rabble-rousing started in Iran too, which reminds me nothing is new.
There's a resignation about it all--a realization that we are still living, that this is it and we should make the most of it. Last year with the fall coming upon us, we still had the vaccine to look forward to. But now? Now what?
"Not sure when I'm getting married," The Ex texts from New York. "Sometime after life gets back to something resembling normal. Lots of aspects of normal social life are screwed up by covid. I chose not to tell you about my baby sooner because I knew your reaction would be negative and you'd make it all about you. Which you have. Yes, she was planned. Don't take everything so fucking personally. At this rate we're all going to die of some sort of supermutant coronavirus in the next 3-5 years. Hope I'm wrong. I'm not trying to be sideways with you."
I tell him I'm not upset, that I feel like I've dodged a bullet. "I do not envy you," I write spitefully, hating being spiteful.
And that is how the "Hot Vax Summer" went.