We went to the mall today, because it’s possible.
I got oddly emotional browsing ties in one of my favourite shops: why would anyone need a tie? I properly choked up.
Dalia tried on a sandal without a sock and they took the pair away for immediate quarantine. Whatever exactly that entails.
I picked up two pants from the tailor, about four months late, having forgotten that they exist. Looking at the jeans realizing I haven’t worn any in about 100 days. And that I have about eight pairs.
The mall music made me feel like I was in a nightclub. A long ago pre-pre-covid memory for me. Life has become so silent, bird chirps and time ticking mostly.
Everything is weird.
It seems very important that we shop. That I spend. Like all that we’ve saved during this time never belonged to us in the first place. And should just be handed over. Tip the restaurant, tip the driver, tip the poor server double time – on the sad half re-opened sidewalk patio – to keep them smiling under the mask.
Buy spring and summer shirts even now that we’ve finally realized that we have too many already. Buy sweaters from last winter because stock needs to keep moving. Buy sweaters for next winter because we don’t know what’s coming.
The greatest civic duty seems to have become buying things. More than washing your hands, more than staying apart, maybe even more than saluting frontline workers, and the fallen, and the forgotten families of the fallen. Global salvation lies in consumption. More than before, more than ever. Buy online, buy in-store; buy it twice.
The world and the markets and their recoveries depend on us. The local economies and the international ones and everything in between. Rent cottages again, fly domestic, book international flights and hope that you can actually go anywhere. Because they need help everywhere.
We need smoke stacks spouting again. China producing knick-knacks again. Restaurants cooking for us again. Schools taking care of our kids again. Nature bending to our will again.
I am exactly the hypocrisy that I’m angry with. I’m fighting for both my sanity and my humanity – by going to the mall.
I gave in and bought new shorts. And then a sandwich at the bottega. And I might even add my name to the long list to sit on a patio and pay three times more for a beer than what I would to have it on my balcony. And soon I hope that this will all be normal again. Whatever exactly that means anymore.
Dad In The World 