0xbb5eb035…8d92sent to0xf18407c1…3156·#10,057,854·view on Etherscan
!smokesignal{"m":"I pull into the parking spot, and grab from the passenger seat my shopping list and my face mask. Such a line might ordinarily begin a first draft of an irreverant dystopian fiction novel. Alas.\n\nMy use of the face mask has an irony to it, and not the deliberate sort of irony I might take pride in. On one hand, it is a scientific, medical product, grounded firmly in the solid subjects of air particles and pathogens. But this is not why it's in my car, and it's not why I latch the elastic bands around my ears. It's certainly not why I leave the fabric below my chin.\n\nTwo employees wait by the supermarket entrance, fully wearing face masks and armed with sanitizer bottles. I hold out my hands as if to accept wine-soaked bread from a priest. He squeezes the trigger but the holy sanitizer fails to come out. He gives it a few more tries. I give a smile and say \"that's good enough\", lathering my hands with imaginary sanitizer. For the moment, this seems to appease the poor soul.\n\nHe mumbles something and gestures to my mask. Well, you can't win em all: I pull the fabric over my face, exactly as someone might if they were worried about the infection. After all, niggas gotta eat, and the food I desire lies past this guard, who himself is doing what he thinks he must to eventually secure his own food.\n\nHe further indicates I must go to the hand sanitizer dispenser nearby and put some on. Fortunately, the indicated dispenser is beyond his post. Without looking back, I give a halfhearted attempt at pretending to depress the lever, lather yet more imaginary sanitizer onto my hands, and pull the fabric back down to below my chin. I hope that he sees this final act of heresy and does not act on it. In any case, he does not act on it. My obeisance has once again granted me access to the fruits of capitalism.\n\nI buy my things, ranging from the essential (lettuce, beef) to the inessential (poppy seed muffins). Occasionally, there is eye contact from another shopper wearing a mask properly. Sometimes the eye contact is sustained, and I imagine it's to do with the positioning of my own mask. Perhaps they are getting angry. Perhaps they are getting curious. Perhaps they think I'm an idiot. I make sure to not look away first, hoping they might at least rule out explanations of laziness or negligence.\n\nHow would I respond, if directly challenged by a fervent follower of the Covid Chior? I'm not sure.\n\nTo be concise I could say something like \"I will not participate in this delusion\", but they would likely interpret *delusion* as *hoax*, and that wouldn't seem to do much greater good.\n\nI could try to summarize the deeply insightful point that [Chris makes in this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzwk7ylAssc), that this pandemic seems to reveal that we are placing physical health at the top of the value hierarchy (above freedom, happiness, or family, for example), without actually realizing we've done so. But this would require an open, relaxed mind to be digested at all, and times like these do not tend to encourage such thinking.\n\nI could try to explain that to wear the mask fully is to implicitly support a panic that I find unwise and rash. Maybe I'll try that one out, if indeed I am challenged.\n\nBut so far, it's a moot consideration. No one challenges me beyond those employees whose job descriptions include it, and the eye contact from other shoppers remains ambiguous as to judgment. But sometimes, the eye contact seems more than trivial.\n\nI take it as a positive sign that the cashiers are not wearing masks, and don't seem to care in the slightest that I'm effectively not wearing mine.\n\nI leave the supermarket and drive home. I leave my cloth charm in the passenger seat and bring in the groceries. I deliberate carefully on which meats are to be placed in the freezer or the fridge.\n\nHow long will this last?\n\n---\n\n> The special mark of the modern world is not that it is sceptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it.\n\n-- G. K. Chesterton\n","v":2,"c":{"topic":"misc"}}