the mask

I boarded the westbound Green Line going to Oak Park at State Street.  There were two other guys in the car and neither one of them was wearing a mask.  Pissed me off.  I involuntarily shot them mildly dirty looks, but I was wearing a mask so who could tell.

Masks have been in the news lately. Pence didn't wear one at the Mayo and got a lot of shit so he wore one at his next visit.  Trump didn't wear one to a mask factory, but later claimed he had been wearing one earlier when he was somewhere in the building that nobody could see him, but took it off later and the point of that was who knows.  A guy at a dollar store was shot and killed for asking a customer to wear a mask.  There was footage of a cop in Austin getting pushed into a lake, and of New York cops beating the shit out of some guy who refused to wear one.

It's not that big a deal if you ask me.  After like five minutes you forget you are wearing it.  The main drawback for me, riding that train, was that I could not wet my fingers to turn the pages of my newspaper. 

Oak Park was beautiful.  I knew a woman once who had lived in Marina City but had moved out.  I was shocked, how could somebody who once lived in the towers ever want to leave?  I just wanted to see some trees she replied.  Well we do have some of those itty bitty downtown trees, but yeah, we basically don't have trees,  Oak Park is loaded with them and this is the time of year that the brightest ones are in bloom, and away from the lake it was warmer, and it was all just very pleasant. I got off the train and walked the tree-lined streets, but sure as the sun rises every morning after an hour I had to pee.  In the time of corona with everything closed there is no place to pee.  The only solution was to get back on the train and go home and pee there.

Kind of a bummer and walking back to the train my sunny mood had faded and passing a few unmasked people I was decidedly irked,   More than I should have been, they weren't traveling in big groups, they weren't, I don't know, shouldering assault rifles and waving flags with swastikas, and it  occurred to me that  I am kind of irked a lot lately.  I don't like not being able to go to the bar, the improv or the watercolor class, even have lunch with my sister, and I hate these empty streets and the overall feeling, even on the brightest spring morning, of doom.

So maybe that's part of the reason there is so much ill will going around these days, both tribes even beside the controversy are walking around with a basic high level of irkness.  And back in the days before March 13 when people mingled freely, you really couldn't tell who was a Trumpist and who was a democrat and we all kind of got along.  But anymore we can spot each other at a glance by whether or not we are wearing a ,mask.  The tribes are clearly differentiated on sight.  No good cam come of this.