Some loose strands

• The claustrophobia of a face mask and fogged glasses.

• Visual illiteracy: people not being able to read social queues or body language because personal protective equipment.

• A mask of flowers.

• Sweet smelling herbs carried in the pockets to keep the plague away because people thought that “bad air” or miasma was the cause of infection.

• Lauren’s fiancé made a joke how we will all need intimacy coordination after this pandemic.

• A hug through a plastic sheet.

• A socially distanced sex scene.

• Running out of things to talk to because you see the same people too often and nothing is happening in the world.

• Struggling to stay present in body and in mind during meetings with the removal of the physical connection. Screen exhaustion: trying to channel you entire world through a screen: who is talking, there I am, email notification appearing on screen, the house moving around you: everything shifting and pulling focus from each other.

• Boccaccio The Decameron introduction: “What with the lack of appropriate means for tending the sick, and the virulence of the plague, the number of deaths reported in the city whether by day or night was so enormous that it astonished all who heard tell of it, to say nothing of the people who actually witnessed the carnage.”