Member-only story
You're Not French Until You've Blockaded Your High School
Tuesday 24 March 2020
It’s another beautiful morning. I can’t see the sun, but its offering of grace is made manifest on the buildings opposite me.
Yesterday I only went outside once, and that was to go for a walk around the neighbourhood. I didn’t want to go for a run for the third day in a row, lest I run down my immune system. So I put my headphones on and ventured out. While I don’t usually wear them in the street, having experienced the oppressive quiet of the day before, I felt a strong urge to cancel the silence and escape into my own world. Silence-cancelling headphones, you could say.
If there’s one thing I’m absolutely certain about, it’s that the quarantine measures taking effect around the world will make our society more insular and introverted. Already, there are signs of people and employees interacting more and more on social media, as the right to meet in person remains held in abeyance. Society was already atomised as it was, and I don’t think the direction our brave new world is taking will end well for us.
As I leave the home I get a strong sense of being watched. Normally when I go outside, I don’t think about the fact that there are people in buildings who might be looking out their windows at me. I just assume, unthinkingly, that if I can’t see…
