Outdoors
Chipped paint digs into the underside of my bare thighs — something vaguely scared of whatever chemical it contains scuttles through my mind, but doesn’t take hold — I don’t move. I am sitting on the friendly side of an invisible wall that has grown only stronger in the preceding months; an unseen division between house and other. On this side, I breathe freely. On the other, I suck air through several cotton layers, under constant threat from the stream of walkers, joggers, and commuters that inhabit the busy intersection. Sometimes people make brief eye contact, but their expressions, obscured by makeshift masks, are largely unreadable. Something worried, maybe; we are, after all on the same team, even as we threaten each other.
It’s a world where the moral quandaries of day to day existence are somehow amplified--simple actions, such as walking by the river, suddenly have societal cost; returning for some forgotten milk becomes a moral issue. To work or not to work; to have others work or not?
While one of the primary symptoms of the virus is a loss of olfactory function, but it seems that the pandemic has taken this luxury from the healthy, as well. Walking outdoors, everything smells vaguely of detergent and the linen of the cloth masks. If I leave it on for too long, I find the taste of a busy laundry room lingers on my tongue. Smells are surprising, because it seems only strong ones permeate the double-layer fabric — the sticky stench of a diesel engine, the pungent aroma of unattended dog waste. After their long absence, or at least significant reduction, I am reminded of the manifold of car-related scents. There’s the air freshener that rolls out of a rolled-down window, but also the earthy hint of fresh rubber on a newer jeep, and the angry gray particulates from an older sedan.
I have realized that I have always been too busy in the spring to see the trees bloom, but I now note that the city has carefully planted arbory with an exciting array of pre-greens. Pink tufts and white clouds float from winter-hardened branches, anticipating the sunny summer to come. I watch the rosy rivulets of a squat, nameless shrub come into being over the course of a week, and marvel when they hold their neon hue over the next weeks — how could I have never seen this?
Its a strange Friday, when, despite directives from above, or a break in the weather, or any change in numerical statistics, the mood in Cambridge shifts. The same people are out for a stroll, but now it is impossible to jaywalk near the corner by the porch. In the evening, the busy hum of traffic continues past 7 or 8, and music wafts out of a speeding BMW. Is this acceptance? A step towards a new, detergent-laced normal? A masked woman carrying too many Trader Joe’s bags glances my way, the same worn worry written across her forehead. Perhaps it is too early to tell.
