Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Just as I’m about to leave the office, another worker peeks over the wall of my cube. Can I proofread a PPT that has to go out tonight? Sure. I wonder, though, what a PPT is. Personal Protective Trenchcoat? An email arrives. It’s a Powerpoint presentation. Oh. I get to work on it, spotting inconsistent capitalizations, bullet points that aren’t lined up, semicolons that should be colons, and the like. If it were to go out as it was, I doubt that anyone would notice, but it’s my job to be finicky. I send my notes back after about an hour and head out. It’s dark when I leave, which hasn’t happened in a month or so. The rain has stopped. The cars have their headlights on, which makes things a little more abstract. Smaller lights shoot past me, mounted on bicycles or the helmets of people on scooters. I find that my peripheral vision doesn’t work well at night when I’m wearing a mask. I don’t actually see the mask, except for just below the lower edge of my glasses. It shouldn’t affect my vision, but it does. Outside the supermarket, two boys bump elbows, spin, duck down, and bump them again. It’s a secret handshake, adapted for the time of the virus. A black double-wide baby carriage comes toward me out of the darkness. I have to step out into the street to avoid it. Cats fade in and out of shadows. A raven swoops down from beyond a streetlamp, lands on a fence, and caws at me. I caw back. It just stares. I’m betrayed by my American accent, once again.