The pandemic imposed an alien voyeurism due to social distancing, which in a way, only allowed people’s essence to be captured throughout miles of distance- perhaps, eighteen floors of height.
Even though COVID hit ruthlessly in the shores of Guerrero, Mexico, causing a forced quarantine in May, people were gradually coming back to the immensity of the ocean. They were starting to get back to their old lives, but with a contemporary dictionary: facemasks, social distancing, loneliness, or well-being. Nevertheless, while it was a necessity for some to be in the sea to catch the everyday fish; for others, it was a way of getting out of the daily routines established within the new reality: a search for freedom that only salty and greenish water can provide.
The absence of humans allowed for the ocean to be naturally cleansed, turning into a deep green into a scale of turquoise clarities. A miracle for Costa Victoria and the habitants of the shore, mostly the flora and fauna diversity. With the spread of the light and the arousing darkness of the evening, events change within seconds; in the morning, individuals scrape the sand and the rest of garbage with fluorescent nets, and in the afternoon, people swim, take photos or simply rest. They arrive at the shore as soon the first ray of the sun hits the sparkly sea, and they depart with the last sigh of the sunset, when the biggest predators begin to come out from the depths into the surface.
Every day, every hour, every sunbeam saved an ephemeral moment of strangers who enjoyed the magnificence of Acapulco with their families or by themselves. They were so immersed in the marine breeze and the songs by seagulls that they forgot about the possibility of being watched from an 18th floor. The ordinary moments of life that bring joy to cautious observers serves as an escape. Fishermen shared their space with pelicans and facemasks, children chased each other or learned how to surf, and couples buried themselves completely into the sand and into their love. People let themselves be carried away by the current or simply floated in a relaxed state of mind. Parents observed their kids’ childhood slip by while they held their hands in a short walk by the beach, hugged them, showed them how to swim or were even reminded of that lost unpreoccupied adulthood spark of joy. Although everyone was concentrated in a single space, they respected the fact that some people didn’t want to meet new strangers. They were all submerged into their own worlds, games, and thoughts; for a brief moment, they could forget about the facemasks and the preoccupation of a merciless virus.
The clues that arise from an era characterized as frivolous, doubtlessly, have highlighted hope and resilience; two virtues absolutely necessary for surviving towards the lack of empathy, desperation, and loneliness. Society had been divided by those who could go out and those who needed to be outside. The ones who have died and the ones who have survived. Those that swim in the breaking waves and those who travel in dreams. The way in which we relate to each other has been reinvented throughout texts, online learning, home office, videocalls, and mails; distanced approaches of greetings and remote footsteps on the sand.
If we start reinserting ourselves into public spaces like the beach, will we look from an alienist view or eye to eye? Will we see the smiles on people’s faces, or will the facemasks continue to hide them? The new reality will become part of the past or the present of the future? Will we continue with unmeasured patterns of consumerism and contaminating our planet or will we respect the environmental restoration that nature imposed with COVID-19?
Now, I have nothing else but to keep on observing from an alien view from the 18th floor of the apartment and continue to freeze the time that my camera allows me to with memories. For a moment that doesn’t spread fear or sadness, but happiness and melancholy due to seconds that only happen in a pandemic lifetime, or simply, in a lifetime.
