Those days are gone (future stories)

 

I knew this would not be solved quickly. Everyone that says "when we get back to normal" has this stagnant smell of hope to it, knowing damn well that there is no old normal to rewind back to. This is our new normal, as ugly and sad as that sounds it is what sits on the table and stares back at us day in and out. We are as healthy as our weakest neighbor. We are as vulnerable as the poorest country in the world. We are indeed "all in this together" like it or not. Paint that phrase as a sweet thought or a harsh truth, the result is the same. 

I think a lot about the next generation of writers, the future storytellers growing up in seclusion. These are people that do not know what it is to hide in the corner of a noisy party, and trade observations with a stranger. They know nothing of chance encounters in bars and airports, of the magic randomness of a few words traded on the subway, a joke from a passing commuter. They know nothing of the conversations that strike up, or are overheard. They know nothing of eyes meeting across a room, blind dates, crowded dive bars and truck stop dramas. I try to imagine what stories will be written in this vacuum, the quarantine limbo. Anne Frank did it of course. It can be brilliant. It can be done.

All the same, I see a decade of bubbles ahead. Tone deaf islands of experience, sour tasting chapters, nothing that smells of real life, a diner on a rainy day, a park just before dawn, a 4am walk all of the way home not taking a taxi as you witness the people puking from cars, the lover's quarrels, the old woman picking through the trash for gold, the lone wingtip in the middle of 5th Avenue. 

Those days are gone.