Are You A Voyeur?

If you are an introvert (like me) and like to make stuff, whether you paint, write, play instruments, sing, dance, or just conjure: maybe the pandemic hasn't scorched your plans, or kicked your life into the dust.

Maybe you feel even more fertile and excited.

Maybe your imagination is on fire.

You see yourself at the top of the charts, so to speak.

No one can do what they used to do. So, in a sense, it might feel like the playing field is levelled? No one is any better than anyone. We are all tossed out into the big field of "Give it a go. How can it hurt?"

And with more time to ourselves, we can Facebook to our hearts' contents, making friends every day, though we may never meet in the flesh.

Some people are distraught and destroyed by this. It is like being sucked into a vortex the size of a tin of beans. Space is limited, breathing constricted. And there is the slight scent of mortality, too. Nothing is real, if it is not in person.

Who knows what is being cooked up, in the virtual planes of cyber reality? When you see a person in the flesh, he may not look anything like his Facebook photos.

Maybe COVID is turning us into speculators and voyeurs. Working from home, we entertain ourselves endlessly with fantasies. We have more to watch than we have ever had. And we have more to question, too. What is a fact? Did this really happen?

And what can we do? You can fall in love as many times as you want to, online. No one needs to know.

And this is the way Pinky would see the world. Not as a malevolent place where people prey on each other, stealing and lying and hurting.

If , in reality, we are all good, then how could any revelation be harmful? If Adam and Eve were not full of shame, as the story goes, would they not feel unplussed about their nakedness?

Pinky is endlessly curious, but not because she wants to hurt anyone. She is seeking something she thinks lives inside herself. That thing might be more readily available in someone else.

She wants to learn. She wants to imitate. At the core, she doesn't understand why she doesn't really know herself. She thinks that the more she knows about other people, they more she will discover about who she is meant to be.

Her mind takes photos of the strangers, and makes notes. She can obsess on why that man has such a long moustache. It feels like he was born with it. Is this because he doesn't like his upper lip? Is it because his paramour finds him sophisticated? Does he have to avoid certain foods?

So, you see, one observation leads to a million questions. And this certainly passes the time.

Pinky has no money, really. But she has time.

And the most important human trait, I think: she wonders.

And if you have a good heart, can that hurt anyone?