checkout line

My "friend" almost to the point of being a passion for more than a decade, the friendship seemed to fade as the pandemic began to ease up, and I wondered why: my enthusiasm for rising early, four o'clock predawn, over coffee, mugga black and lumpa dark, starting to think, recall, read, study, open the blog and write in the morning darkness: my "friendship", close relationship with +Time, faded and died, and I didn't understand why. And I don't want it back, and don't understand that either: why?

Reading about others, how others are feeling as pandemic isolation and masking relaxes and we are allowed, and permit ourselves, to resume social interaction.

We are hesitant. Somewhat wary. If I respond to others' greeting by hesitating before slowly reaching out to shake their extended hand, it's not reluctance but new normal. I thought and rather hoped that shaking hands would not return. Where is the hand sanitizer? Covid pandemic's forced discipline of reserve lasted long enough to become New Normal. As its essentiality eases, I'm not sure what of what used to be normal I want to reclaim, resume. I don't want to stay confined in what's being called my "bubble", but I'm not ready to go back out and play.

Once on this blog, I wrote a recall of that feeling, that I experienced the first week of July 1966 when we returned to the United States after living in Japan, and fully adapting to its totally different culture for three full years:

Off the long plane flight, baggage, customs, picking up Tiger the cat waiting in his cage at the PanAm claim room, our first hour back, driving a rental car, on the wrong side of the road - - having so eagerly looked forward to tasting fresh American milk after three years of yucky reconstituted milk - - but stopping in front of an American supermarket was intimidating. I had forgotten, and the challenge of walking into a such huge store, with so many people, endless aisles, countless products and choices, and standing in line at checkout. I drove on, rattled that I was not ready.

Coming ready or not, and not ready again. To resume anything. Anything. And especially, not to continue what of the Old Normal had become so all-consuming during the pandemic: nothing to do but blogpost. Sick of it, and Done. I can blame it on the stress of life during the pandemic, that made me reconsider everything about life, a fair reason and acceptable excuse. At times like today when I'm "called" to write something to flush it out of mind, I'll write, post, leave it up twenty-four hours or so, then revert it to Draft and flush it to Archive. If my descendants want to retrieve it for any reasons, it'll be there.

ABC&PTL