New friendships made, stubborn chat between arch enemies, no escaping the facts, the virus was more than biological change, the social network was changing, how we had the chance to look at ourselves anew, perhaps ask questions for the first time ever, questioning what went on unnoticed, Mary sits at her table, doing the math of the era. In the writer’s manual they said that all the great writers made themselves known, in times of crisis, study the literature, what came out of depression, the artists who didn’t suffer a personal agony of some type, out of difficulty we often find ourselves again? All this change has to be incorporated into her book, all relationships appear to alter as, she pauses, he is moving around again upstairs, she no longer sneers, hoping to hear him fall.
Relationships change, she is getting selfish, it’s about time, and I’m not getting younger she reminds herself, even if she looks and feels ten years younger since the virus precautions came into existence, everyone looks better, hard to believe it, to be young is a matter of less stress, she recalls passing the new head shop, she used to have names for the place, now she wonders if she will try the new form of marijuana once this thing is over; Hollywood names seem to approve it, and she really trusts some of the names.
What do I miss without being too personal she thinks? She dallies with her talisman, a real led pencil, she can’t imagine a writer’s desk without one, a thin red pencil with a rubber on one end, correcting the script at least. Is it the lack of shopping, is it the lack of fear of having visitors, the need to be more focussed on self cleaning rather than the furnishings, she smiles, bathing in the full bath is way beyond the shower and the new go thing, no fun in that sort of scrub when in the shower, baths for the future , no other way, her skin is softer too, and the odours are all sweet, as if a small change in the washing habit is the same as the slow un buckling of a fragrant rose, cleaner the air, clearer the fragrance, same could be said about the other, she looks forlornly at the ceiling, Excited by dirt, she has many ways of saying it, but the virus is bringing out the imagination. Was it the worry, she doesn’t want to think that, she forgave him during her walk, not that she’d allow him near her, the six foot rule, that she can handle, does it apply to indoors, it should she says, talking to the pencil in her hand, she, it has to be a female pen, it’s not chewed up, nice and thin, and it works for real when it has to, it must be a female pencil.