Heat-mapping cameras are being designed to scan our distance from one another in workspaces and on the streets. Our infection status will be logged and tracked by our telephones. Overwhelmed by living in the future, I hunt for a chaser, eventually finding something human in a story about two elderly lovers whose budding romance was cut short when the border between their towns was closed. Each day they meet at three o’clock in the afternoon for a picnic on a rural road where plastic fencing separates Germany from Denmark. I wonder how they’re making sense of this world.
There should be a clinical term for the sensation of wanting to look at my phone while looking at my phone. I turn it off and go outside to look at the flowers. I’ve never stopped to enjoy the flowers before.
