“Bucolic interludes laced with light anxiety”; thus Parul Sehgal in the Times on the relationship of writers to time in these times. She’s not wrong. I have exchanged the bucolics of campus life for life in my semi-abandoned college town, which can include trips like this to the beach in Wilmette where a woman walks her dog and a man stares out over the water and a handsome young couple with a Seventies vibe saunters by, he with a thin mustache and she in a shiny jacket, all of us unmasked. We play at normality, but the normal escapes us.