Because of Covid19 many golden opportunities will be lost forever. For example, I will never be able to show Valéry Giscard d’Estaing the way to the downstairs men’s toilet of the Uni II building ever again. This was a few decades back, and he was lost—wandering desperately in the concrete halls. Whimpering. I came to his rescue and I am sure he has thought of me fondly every day since then.
Well, until December 2nd, when he died of complications from the virus.
This is the problem: selfish desires and greedy minds. Not only have we lost those serendipitous encounters, but also simple pleasures: missing lunches with colleagues and friends; not seeing the family both here and in Canada. Instead, we are immersed in a world of face masks and hand-spray, repetitive meal planning, furtive shopping, and a general Sleeping Beauty/Rip Van Winkle desire to sleep until it’s all over.
Determined to come up with some positive aspects for the new corona virus world, we’ve all been thinking hard. The New York Times, for example, has introduced a full page of recipes every week. They are often ethnic, complicated and esoteric. Strangely, what they all have in common is kosher salt.
Learning Chinese, taking up the clarinet, or finally reading War and Peace are all noble projects. Somehow, there’s not enough time, and certainly not an aerosol of morale or a droplet of concentration. We are scattered.
Computers help, of course. I have learned how to produce a bar-code for the post office for every single package I send out of Switzerland. That is the extent of my new skills. Rather, it is what I have done away with that I consider to be my most precious accomplishments.
For example, I reached an ironing epiphany a week or two back. Back in the old days, shirts and skirts got ironed. In a blinding flash it came to me that this is a total waste of time. Who sees? Who judges? Who cares? I have since been casting a critical eye on the actual laundry pile. Perhaps it, too, is extraneous to purpose.
Cleaning and tidying the house also used to serve a social function: i.e., that your invited guests neither saw nor suspected your inner pig. I have found that if you have no guests, then your inner pig grows to wild boar proportions. The other day the postman cast a judgmental eye on my door mat which was covered with big, flat, dried mud flakes. I vacuumed it this morning.
And then there is hair. The colours! The highlights! The cuts! The styling! The expense! I last saw William back in January, between trips to Aqaba and Sri Lanka. He phoned me up the other day to ask if I had died of Covid. I was ashamed I hadn’t, and promised to present myself to him in January.
I’m going back to lie on the couch. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
