Trash Bags

I signed up for a one-day pottery class nearby a while ago and when I checked the fine print it read “Due to the situation with covid, we no longer provide aprons to students. Trash bags are available to protect your clothing.” I have thought about this a lot every day since, and bottom line, I do not think a finer metaphor for how this summer feels is available. Yes, we used to do aprons. Now, there’s trash bags. There is a lot of that going around, isn’t there?

I’m not sure how to quantify the feeling going around, the zeitgeist, general morale…I guess you could call it the ~vibe~, if you were inclined that way. It’s exhaustion from summer heat and an unrelenting news cycle and a hundred new daily problems. Worse than that, there’s disappointment, which is buying a house and making a permanent home for itself. This was supposed to be the summer of back to normal, then the autumn of back to normal, and instead one season is falling into the next without any kind of solid progress. Mostly the hopeful chatty Zooms, the thank-yous to service workers, the new internet-ified projects have long since stopped. I can’t remember another time in my life when the response to “How are you?” was so universal: it’s “Tired.” OK, yes, but also resilient, entrepreneurial, creative, and more, just to keep going amid a world that persists in handing out trash bags to people that asked for and deserve aprons.

The pottery class information includes a note that the clay will wash off clothing and a link to order your own clay-pron separately for $45 plus shipping except it’s out of stock due to supply chain issues. It’s not a big deal, it’s just another little tiny thing joining a pile of inconveniences and expenses and chores. I should just be grateful to be able to go to a pottery class for a day, shorter and smaller than in 2019, planned well in advance with masks and proof of vaccine and a surcharge, but you know what? An apron would have been nice.