March
This was originally posted on my own site.
March 2020 was the month when the coronavirus really hit the fan for much of Europe and North America.
It’s now March 2021. People are understandably thinking about this time last year. Tantek wrote about this anniversary:
We reached our disembarkation stop and stepped off. I put my mask away. We hugged and said our goodbyes. Didn’t think it would be the last time I’d ride MUNI light rail. Or hug a friend without a second thought.
I recently added an “on this day” page to my site. Now that page is starting to surface events from this time last year.
Today, for example, is the one year anniversary of the last talk I gave in a physical space. Myself and Remy travelled to Nottingham to give our talk, How We Built The World Wide Web In Five Days.
The next morning, before travelling back to Brighton (where we’ve been ever since), we had breakfast together in a nice café.
Eating toast with @Rem.
Usually when I post toast updates, it’s a deliberate attempt to be banal. It harks back to the early criticism of blogging as just being people sharing what they’re having for lunch.
But now I look back at that little update and it seems like a momentous event worth shouting from the rooftops. Breaking bread with a good friend? What I wouldn’t give to do that again!
I can’t wait until I can be together with my friends again, doing utterly ordinary things together. To “wallow in the habitual, the banal” as the poet Patrick Kavanagh put it.
I miss hanging out with Tantek. I miss hanging out with Remy. I miss hanging out.
But I’m looking forward to being in a very different situation in March 2022, when I can look back at this time as belonging to a different era.
Between now and then, there’ll be a gradual, bumpy, asynchronous reintroduction of the everyday social pleasures. I won’t take them for granted. I’ll be posting about toast and other everyday occurrences “wherever life pours ordinary plenty.”
This was originally posted on my own site.
