I should say that I’d been vaccinated by then, as I’m writing this during what appears to be the latter stage of the pandemic, though who knows for certain if we are in the latter stage, or the early stage of the latter stage, or an interval between the two, or merely the ‘new normal.’ Which uncertainty makes me feel as though I need to justify my trip, by way of its necessity, but not so much that I’m actually going to try to do that here, for that would mean addressing every argument that might be brought forth, or posited, as reason that I should not have gone, though I wouldn’t have gone if I had thought there was reason that I shouldn’t, and in the end I went because I wanted to go and because I felt no qualms in doing so, and am writing about it this way only because to not do so would feel to me like an omission, insofar as everything that is happening now is happening in the context of the pandemic, and everything pandemic-related seems to me like it wants to be acknowledged, if only for the sake of perspective, or decency, or citizenship, or the like.