Throw Caution To The Wind

I wish I can throw caution to the wind, but I can’t. Today I read this piece of news that more than half of the new Cov-19 cases are from people who have gone to restaurant. One minute you are enjoying your food and the next thing you know you come down with all the accursed symptoms. For some reason I imagine those positive diagnosis must be from people who have dined indoors. I guess sitting at the outdoor table will be fine, isn’t it? I mean preferably when you sit there, big gusts of wind come blowing, taking all your breath away. However it won’t be pleasant to sit there with wind blowing. It won’t be pleasant to sit there with a draft, let alone big wind.

Now come to think of it, people who take airplane and train should be easier to get infected than restaurant patrons, right? The space on an airplane or on a train is more cramped, air more stifling, virus more rampant. This is why I can’t go to New York City, unless I want to take the risk. I never drove to New York City, which from here is only 35 miles away. Still the task is daunting, considering the traffic, the tunnel, the parking price, the confusing one way street. Train is the only option. I am not living in South Jersey or North Jersey, both with shuttle boats to and fro Manhattan. Those are for the more economically well off people. In our Central Jersey, train or bus is the only option. Either way, it is easy to get contracted with virus.

I know people who wouldn’t even go to any public places, not even a park. Their food– delivered; their work and study–online. Several years back, I watched a documentary about “hikikomori” in Japan, which means a person who never leaves his or her room, not even for the purpose of throwing away garbage–if their relatives don’t come to the door to pick up the garbage for them, there will be a big pile accumulating. I couldn’t imagine such a person. Does this person ever feel bored, cooped up in one room all the time, cut off from the world? Now I guess the virus forces many people to become hikikomori like creatures.

It is said Emily Dickinson, for the later part of her life, didn’t leave her home for years and eventually stayed in her room and in her bed all day long. Is she a first recorded hikikomori in history? A genius, but with a bit of psychological peculiarity. All genius do. That’s how they write poems that other people cannot write. My problem is that I am too normal, too common, too forgettable an Asian woman that I sometime forget about my own existence. I don’t have any peculiarity at all unless I try hard to develop one, which I swear I won’t do.