I have been known to have social distanced. It is not the same as socially distanced. I have known social distancing. I have known social distancing, in its comings and its goings. Have you? Haven't you? The social distancing of snubs and snafus and near-misses. Or near Missus. The social distancing of forays and fumbles, dalliances and disasters. I have known them all. As T.S. Eliot penned it:
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phraseI have known social distancing by any other name. Filed under the names of loneliness, alienation, indifference, rebuff, and buffering. Under the banners of taboo, time, and space. The labels of contagion or conjugation. Felt as intimacy or aridity.
I have socially distanced by one word, one sentence, a single faux pas.
Haven't you? Have you?
Social distancing.
How about you?
How about us?
I have sung hymns to social distancing.
No one heard them.
Or no one replied.
Social distancing in the key of me, the key of you, the chords of coldness.
We sought the bridge.
They paid the toll.
They crossed the border.
I bridged the gap.
You narrowed the way . . . of distancing's definition, its social cues, its molecular matrix.
And while we're at it, at this safe distance, socially speaking, tell me, what is its opposite?
Social proximating?
As in: "I want to hold your hand . . . if you wash it." Or: "I want to touch your elbow (with my elbow) ..."
Social proximating, as in "Baby, socially proximate with me, babe."
It's a new brave new landscape, a brand-new vernacular.
Hold on.
But keep your distance.
For your good and mine.
For our good. And for the good of others.
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