Diaries from the Quarantine V - A New Normality

Quarantine has been going on for six weeks. Now most of the world is living as we do, from Rome to New York, Bangkok to Berlin, we are all locked inside waiting for these hard times to pass. 

The world as we knew it has gone, and who knows whether it will ever come back. 

New meanings, structures and symbols are defining our lives. Something as easy as going to buy groceries is now a complex mission we undertake with precautions and worries; we meet with friends online, trying to do activities we bounded on in our past life - watching a movie, playing games - painfully aware that, in the end, we are always alone in front of a screen. 

I like standing on the balcony, looking down on the street that is, day by day, going back to be busy as it used to be - this week some industries started working again in Italy, using the due precautions. I stare at people walking by, some are holding groceries, others are walking the dog; most of them are wearing a face mask. I now understand the appeal of spending hours people-watching from windows and balconies that our elders have always known. 

I wonder how long we will have to use this protective screen, necessary yet depersonalizing - how can we understand each other, when only eyes are visible? Even though they tell much more than we realize, our species (and Western cultures in particular) relies so much on facial expressions that, if face masks are going to be a constant in our foreseeable future, our very own communication methods will have to be revisited. 

Looking down on the street I wonder about all people passing by's lives: where do they come from, where are they going, are they worried about the situation? The other day I went out for a walk around the block and I saw two girls sitting down on a curb, both wearing masks, chatting as we used to be. I wouldn't even have spotted them in normal times, but now the simple act of chatting in the streets is noticeable.

Habits, no matter how deeply carved into our lives, can be modified quickly. We immediately learned to stay at least one metre apart, a bit more if possible; we got used to put masks and gloves on before leaving the house, to wash our hands as soon as we came back and many more times during the day; these are the new rituals that are defining our days. Smartphones and computers that were seen as human-enslaving machines are now the only thing that allows us to see our dear ones. I wonder if people will remember this when they criticize migrants crossing the sea with nothing but a cell phone in their pockets. 

Societies rely on rituals to perform. Even in the darkest of times, rituals such as weddings, funerals, religious services, celebrations of any kind must be done as they mark essential crossings in an individual's - and the community - life; nowadays, they assume a new form thanks to technology but they do not lose their value and importance as social connectives. It is not an ideal solution, but it is what we can do at the moment to keep going and not forget what our cultures are made of. 

This is the new normality  which is being built day by day: queues, gloves, face masks, sanitizing hand gels will be part of it. Hopefully, soon we will go back to share eveything in person and not through a screen.

As queueing up outside supermarkets is now the new normal, I started looking up and catching a glimpse of what is there.