This fall, I ignored my indoor hypochondriac hamster, because as soon as I got my vaccine passport, I started going out wherever the public was. I had to because in the last few months I have developed an unhealthy passion for the game June’s Journey, which filled the off-peak hours of containment.
Cinema, theater, shows, museums and restaurants, I filled my agenda as if to challenge myself and kick myself in the right place, after more than a year of sinking into my soft laundry.
I developed new reflexes, showing my passport and ID as quickly as possible, while I have lots of masks in all my coat pockets and in each of my handbags. But I still can’t get used to washing my hands with sticky, smelly soaps.
Take off the mask, put on the mask, open the smart phone, take out the health insurance card, close the phone, put the card away … The only stress to be experienced is that of the phone, when the battery is at 5% about 30 minutes before your restaurant reservation – I’m thinking of having my vaccination passport laminated, like my mother, who doesn’t have an iPhone.
It became obvious that the process was going smoothly when I went to spend three days in the beautiful city of Quebec to see the exhibition on Serge Lemoyne at the National Museum of Fine Arts. The mask and the vaccine passport were at all times. In the bus to get there, to the hotel, to the cinema where I went to see again Dune with a friend, at Boulay’s where I ate copiously to the soft music forgotten by conversations, plates and utensils colliding. Seems like every outing has become an event, I don’t know how long this feeling will last. But if one day I become jaded again, I will remember the pandemic to punish myself.
Sometimes, I forget the mask if I have to move a few steps in the restaurant and I run back to my table apologizing, without really understanding the logic of the risk of the few meters of distance that separate me from the toilet, but Well.
Despite these small sources of irritation, it all feels very good, even if at times I feel like I’m participating in a laboratory experiment. Each person who has returned to a semblance of normal life since the start of the school year contributes to testing the return to common existence and the longevity of vaccines.
In my first outings a few months ago, when I only had one dose, I couldn’t help but mentally calculate the days between me and the first symptoms of COVID-19. Now I don’t even think about it, there are too many. If there was a case in the many places I have been to since September, it would have been known, it seems to me. In short, it works. And I still can’t explain the emotion I felt when I saw a full room give the room a standing ovation. All inclusive by François Grisé. To hear the applause, to see the happiness of the actors, that was priceless.
I just narrowly missed the easing of restrictions on the show The course of the days of Dumas, who gave me puffs of pure happiness, despite the fact that all the fibers in my body wanted to throw themselves in front of the traineeship and dance, while we had to stay in our places.
It was time for the discos to reopen because I could feel the comeback from raves illegal immigrants with police raids. I can’t wait to go singing GAFA. by Nicola Ciccone in a karaoke with my friend Hugo Meunier…
When I think that last year, practically at the same date, I wrote a column entitled “Winter by force”, because we saw the wall coming, because we weren’t going to spend Christmas with family, without forgetting that it was going to be doubled by a curfew. I think back to it with a thrill, the atmosphere was so heavy. The vaccines weren’t there yet, and that’s what changed everything. A vast majority of people have put their shoulder to the needle, I see something admirable. Because these audiences that I have worked with in the past few weeks have done what was necessary to get us back together.
We’re all guessing that there will likely be more outbreaks, and that we’ll have to juggle ever more absurd guidelines (two meters, a meter, soon centimeters?), But something has finally happened: the hope.
And, icing on the cake, the cultural places and the places where we like to see each other, at least those which survived, are waiting for us, with open arms.
I hope that at the end of this collective ordeal, which will eventually happen, we will have remembered how much we need each other. Let’s call it a rebirth, even if winter is coming.