This Dust Among Us

HELP! How this pandemic finds everyone cornered and comfortably numb

IT'S QUITE TEMPTING TO WRITE about this virus these days. That has to be the M.O. at least for the time being, so as to stay relevant and all that. But this virus for the next couple of minutes. That’s the allotted time I planned on elucidating everything that has to do with this pandemic, instead of giving you details in a way most articles have tried to do since this virus went viral.

Besides, we have been confronted with a lot of viruses before. It’s not something that would scare the living daylights out of us. But this recent one is entirely different. Although it came out late last year, it was only recently that its contamination had brushed off on every level of society. 

I did make some preparations before deciding to put everything on paper because I wanted to immortalize, so to speak, how devastating this virus had become in a short span of time. So, after taking a quick shower, I went on to my usual routine of puffing myself up. I put on some clothes and applied a little cologne in time for my morning munch.

Breakfast is supposed to be the most important meal of the day, so I made sure that I attend to that before doing something else. Just the typical breakfast of sunny side up, rice, coffee, and some leftover papaya from the night before. I was still feeling a bit drowsy after sleeping for 7 hours and thought that I still need to improve in that department, having been able to sleep just a shade under 8 hours. 

When everything was stashed in my stomach, I took some vitamins that could potentially clog the shit out me eventually, but that’s just my weird take on anything synthetic. I have this habit of eating with my hands and my other feet on top of my chair, but after doing that for a stretch of 30 minutes, I went straight to the sink and washed my hands.

I went on to look for my face mask. For weeks, I was trying to figure out how to use it. I’m ashamed to ask anybody in the house for fear that they might laugh their asses off knowing I’m still ignorant about how to wear this thing on my face. But these face masks are hysterical, I thought I might die of asphyxiation out of it. That would be anticlimactic compared to the scare that everybody’s undergoing right now.

And as some sort of keeping the equilibrium, I had my second wind of caffeine and my headset on, playing some old tunes. I leaned on my chair for a couple of minutes while watching these dust particles on a glint of sunshine from a window curtain. Then I thought, “Only for a moment, and the moment’s gone…”

photo: martin divisek / afp