COVID LOCKDOWNS, TWILIGHT WALKS AND MALAISE AND ENNUI

I just used ten percent of my French vocabulary in the above title. Let’s see how much of the remainder I can drop in this story, which is about liberte, fraternite and anomie.

One early May,1977 afternoon, I waited for a way-behind-schedule Amtrak train to take me home from college. En route to New York City, I stood on the outdoor, elevated eastbound depot platform, and looked toward the sun, by then low on the Indianapolis horizon. Over the course of my life, I’ve waited thousands of hours for thousands of trains. I always look up the tracks, as if doing so makes the train get there sooner.

A male/female couple—presumably also college students—were ardently displaying affection about 100 feet to my west. A large suitcase and a guitar case sat next to the slight, smallish, long-haired schoolboy, who wore a buttoned, short-sleeved white shirt and a straw Panama hat. (When a train is that late, you have time to commit such details to memory). It was clear that the garcon was leaving and his petite, sandy-haired cherie amour was being left behind.

About twenty feet to my east was a chic-ly attired black woman, around 30. She also wore a nice, wide-brimmed hat—in my hometown baseball cap, I began to feel like I was underperforming, hatwise—pulled down to near her eyebrows, as well as snug slacks and a bright yellow, sleeveless blouse, which allowed her to display a silver metal snake bracelet coiled around her upper left arm. I had not previously seen such an ensemble, and silently awarded style points.

We were the only four on the un-train-trafficked platform. Despite our train’s cumulating tardiness, the couple’s anticipatorily mournful affection flowed non-stop. You almost had to admire their sappy romantic endurance. C’est magnifique!

At long last, the headlight of the awaited train approached in the darkness that had, by then, fully descended. Seeing this, the couple effected a full-on “This is it!” parting embrace with a long, matching goodbye kiss. Tres bon!

Its bell clanging, the train coasted to where we four stood on the platform. But instead of stopping, it continued through the station and disappeared into the blackness. It was a freight train.

Silhouetted by the platform’s lights, the young lovers looked at each other, gobsmacked. (I know that’s British, but England isn’t far from France, they were allies in World War II and I’m already running out of French words). The snake-wearing woman and I smiled at each other and quietly laughed.

This same, freight train scenario repeated itself three times over the next half hour. Each time, the couple’s parting embrace became less earnest. When our long-overdue passenger train finally arrived at the Gare du Indianapolis, the couple could barely muster an anti-climactic peck on the cheek. I imagined that if our train had arrived any later, they might just have shaken hands. High fives hadn’t been invented yet.

All relationships—even the closest ones between a man and a woman—rest on the understanding that you’ll spend some time apart. Time apart is not only inevitable; in the right measure, it’s constructive. Hopefully, you’ll spend some of that time apart thinking of each other and looking forward to reuniting. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. If not for the night, there would be no day.

My wife, Ellen, and I have been married for 35 years. She is a great person. She’s kind, insightful, genuine and focused. She has very good judgment. She’s unspoiled and listens more than she speaks. She’s also nice to look at and laughs readily. She’s very easy to share time with. I love doing so. During the Scamdemic, we have often cracked out salsa CDs and had at-home Salsa Nights. It’s not as festive as dancing in a packed club but it’s still fun and even kind of athletic. Laissez le bon temps rouler!

But during parts of the past two years, it’s been weird that, for the first time ever, I have sometimes sought to avoid time with my favorite person in Le Monde.

And Ellen has sometimes asked me, expectantly, “When are you going out today?”

We’ve been home together more than ever. Too much so.

Ellen works, mostly as a volunteer, from home. She spends a lot of time on the phone or in front of a screen. Her employability as a lactation counselor to mothers of newborns is compromised by her unwillingness to “vaxx.” Thankfully, unlike numerous married people who have confided in me, our marriage is not strained by disagreements about the Covid overreaction or the injections.

And fortunately, I have an outdoor job, so I work outside the home five or six days/week from Presidents’ Day through Thanksgiving. At work, I get abundant exercise and interaction with other people. But during the winter, I seldom work.

The solution to domestic overexposure seems simple: just take turns leaving the house. But during the Scamdemic’s most locked down phase, there was nowhere to go. And though lockdowns have gradually been lifted—they say it’s data-driven, but that’s clearly a lie—there still are far fewer options than there used to be. For example, we used to take the train to Manhattan or Philadelphia for day trips, or overnights. While those places have “reopened,” they’ve become less vital and compelling during Long Covidmania, especially to those lacking vaxx passports. Similarly, I like to skate, but the rinks were closed for months and, when they opened, they required masks. Generally, I won’t wear masks and definitely go sans masque during vigorous exercise. While you can pick up books at our local library, the stacks and reading areas remain closed. Some fearful people we know closed their homes to visitors. And some remain so Corona crazy that I don’t want to spend time with them. Ever. Au revoir.

During late afternoons in normal times, I would go to the local college’s gyms and play basketball with the students. Basketball is mentally and physically fast and stimulating. With good teammates, you get into a transcendent, pack mindset. Of course, some teammates, and some days, are better than others. Some days you eat the bear and some days the bear eats you. It keeps the games interesting.

During the first 15 months of Coronamania, the college and its gyms were closed. The students returned and now play some new sport called masked basketball. As staff—not student—I’m barred from the gyms. I’ve sometimes sneaked in during off-peak hours; I have a wily, secret method. But I can’t play in prime-time games because I won’t wear a mask. I’d end up blowing my cover. Literally. A fugitive won’t do that.

Even the basketball rims in local parks were removed for nearly a year. This was the single cheesiest form of widespread, very cheesy, Scamdemic political theater.

With so many normal options gone, I’ve defaulted to taking late day walks in my high- density neighborhood—which resembles the photo above—or in three nearby, unwooded parks. It’s a great blessing to be physically able to walk; we all know people who can’t. Self-propelled motion is intrinsically pleasing. And while my neighborhood is modest, it’s nice enough.

But neighborhood walks are just neighborhood walks. They’re not like walking in the mountains, on the beach, or across a rolling green field. On these walks, I don’t see grand architecture or feel excited, as one might while walking in a distant state or another country. Nor, as I strolled, did I see much pretty snow, though I have seen a few decent sunsets. And winter trees are leaflessly skeletal. On these walks, I’ve seldom felt a pleasant breeze or heard any birds singing.

I’ve usually walked alone. And I pass very few people. Those whom I pass usually avert their eyes and half-hide behind masks. During the first year-plus of the Scamdemic, people would see me coming and cross the street to avoid the lethal threat they believed I presented. Yesterday, I passed pedestrians still wearing masks. But at least they didn’t cross the street to dodge me.

Wait, does that mean we’ve “flattened the curve?”

Because 105 weeks after the lockdowns began, our government-sponsored experts still won’t tell us that we have.

Sometimes, but not usually, I walk to the food store to buy some ingredients to make dinner, perhaps croissants avec fromage. But I rarely have a destination. I’m usually just walking to get out of the house and get some light exercise.

These walks are always about the same. They’re OK, but they’re never fast or fun, as basketball, skating or danse, etc. are. On a walk, you know exactly what you’re going to experience. Walks got old early during the Scamdemic. They almost became a chore.

Like francais vin, these walks have had distinct elements of ennui and malaise. Just as the Eskimos have 47 ways to say “snow” and the Irish recognize 40 shades of green, if I had better command of French, I would probably know that the jaded Gauls have many more words expressing boredom, sadness or alienation. The French excel in melancholia. Despite the destinational hype, Paris has plenty of dreary weather. France gave the world Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett. The French sociologist and suicide scholar, Emile Durkheim, coined the term anomie to describe how individuals feel when social norms and social life have broken down.

These walks have underscored my Scamdemic sense of anomic alienation from many Americans. Afternoon after afternoon, I’ve wondered as I wandered why Americans are so fearful and gullible and why they have passively tolerated—-and even shrilly, insanely supported—unprecedented, unscientific and unhelpful societal disruption that has made life as bizarre as any scenario about which the existentialists wrote.

My late days walks to nowhere have emblematized Coronamania. Humans want to go places. We want to accomplish stuff. We want challenges, variety and human company. We want at least a little excitement and surprise. Aimless solo walks don’t provide any of that.

Many Americans lived in disharmonious households before the Scamdemic. And more Americans live alone than ever. I wonder how these two large cohorts have dealt with Coronamania discord or solitude. Intensified marital strife or loneliness must be much harder than the mild domestic overexposure I’m describing. I’m seeing signs of mental illness among people who have lived alone for the past two years. I expect to see and hear more about this heretofore hidden epidemic. Antidepressants, alcohol, other drugs and/or counseling are poor substitutes for organic, freely offered human interaction.

I used to, as Lucinda Williams sang in Side of the Road, walk by houses at night, see lights on and briefly wonder what the people inside’s lives were like. I don’t wonder about that anymore. Now I just think those people should be outside their homes, doing something other than walking to nowhere.