Pandemic Quirk #3: City Thoughts

This one is really weird for me. I’m actually having thoughts of living in a city. Never in my life has this happened before. Well, actually, in college I used to get in “Malibu Moods,” as I called them, and beg one of my eight suitemates to drive us all to Malibu and live the night like celebrities. We did it two or three times but I can’t say we ever felt like anything but anonymous college kids eating at random diners.

But this current feeling is unexpected; it must be due to the pandemic. At a time when we can’t go to movies, performances, picnics, concerts in the park, hoedowns, or even Thanksgiving dinner together, it makes sense that my mind is straining for images of people packed on Tokyo subways, knocking elbows on busy New York streets, and jamming museums and national monuments in Washington, DC.

I have to remind my brain that those things aren’t happening right now in those places either, but it wants so much to imagine that people are out in the world somewhere being normal around each other.

I’m shocked when thoughts of a someday-vacation are sprinkled with images of tall buildings, bulging marketplaces, and ’round-the-clock chaos. I even imagine moving to some of these places, and yet again tell myself that when the rest of the world can gather, Orcas Island will too.

Someday we will have long conversations on the street in town. Laughter will fill the air. We’ll see each other’s whole faces and enjoy big, extended hugs – ridiculously wonderful hugs. We’ll pack the movie theatre on Friday night, we’ll sit elbow-to-elbow at Orcas Center and sing along with performances on Saturday night, and we’ll gleefully fill the church on Sunday morning. Monday will bring all of the kids back to school, and the Funhouse will be overflowing with the sounds of children in the afternoons.

But cities, I plan to visit you someday. I’ve done just about everything else in life. And now, COVID times have primed me with a need for the mass of humanity, the movement of bodies, the choreography of cultures, the magnetism of street food, and the overwhelm of opportunity found only in the urban landscape.

It’s the last thing I ever thought I’d think about! Surprise, surprise.

These photos are from a free stock site called Pexels, as I try not to use anyone’s photos without permission. Credits in order: picjumbo.com, Life of Wu, Phillipp Birmes, and Cameron Casey.