Spinning

It's weird going out more and also weird that going out more is weird, though I feel light years away from the vaccine even as April 15 approaches, mirage-like. I will not believe this surreal bad dream has started to pass until I am receiving my first shot. 

The local beauty supply store reorganized and I found myself disoriented even there, a mini-haven for me of happy offerings, staring out the long window at the Fatburger sign that was now rotating, and had it always rotated? Watching one of the more obvious displays of Americana I'd seen in a while was mesmerizing, the way the word "Fatburger" spun around and around; why not just replace the word "Fatburger" with "Americana" if you're going to be this on the nose? The sign circled at a moderate but sure pace under the uncharacteristic cloudy sky, seeming as if it had always been spinning there, though I'd never seen the sign move before and no one else appeared to see it now.

I felt so relaxed the other day I left my building without a mask on, as if I was living in the pre-2020 era, only realizing the instant the door thudded closed behind me in the early morning light and I encountered a woman whose mask was missing, my Donald Sutherland snapping at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers moment at last, only mine passed with a gasp versus screaming or pointing, plus I am not a zombie and I will not become a zombie, I don't think, although I also think we're far from done with this pandemic that does not disappear when denied, but keeps on spinning.