I got my vaccination the other day–the first one. It was a warm day and I walked. I showed the doctor my black and blue wrist from when I fell off a ladder the day before. Sheet rocking: we confirmed it’s dangerous. My wrist is OK, I think. The vaccination didn’t hurt a bit. I waited in line and shuffled ahead and stopped again and followed the signs and let the volunteers shepherd me. I was as timid as a new kid on the first day of school. But it was nice to be doing something with other people again: doing the same thing in proximity. Like riding the subway. Or scanning the shelves of a library. I am here, and so are you. Except now I am all hesitation and no swagger. I told the doctor “I’m rusty.” I didn’t tell him this has been such a long, lonely time of brokeness and stuckness and isolation and doubt that it occurred to me the other day: I’ve lost the distinction between dreaming and doing. I’ve been floating in this time-warped space where anything is possible, and nothing will ever happen.
