That it seemed like a foreign city earlier; almost. Am exaggerating, certainly; apart from transiting through Eugene Station to get to the Temple (i.e. Walmart, as in 'the Temple of Commerce'; childish jest but it had its moment), though, it has been two months or most thereof since I spent any time down there.
The bus rides were entirely uneventful although during the return trip, in the comfortable sunlight of mid-afternoon, I had to pinch myself to keep from going to sleep (I'd have missed my stop and gone around a miles-long circular route, ending up back at Eugene Station-- that would really have seemed Twilight Zone territory). I saw a group of about six or seven Black girls or young women (at a distance) at the Station who were, even from my vantage point, carrying themselves in the aggressive attitude of a clique of not necessarily nice girls at high school and, sure enough, a minute or so later (they were totally out of my sight at this point) I heard the shouting of an aggrieved party and the shouting of an aggressive party but which was which I will of course never know. The yelling included the words 'Why should I?' and 'You don't own this town'. As I say, I will never know the circumstances but given Current Events it would be rather dim not to conceive that this was a minor incident in them.
And at the Kiva, I wasn't to have used my own Kiva bag (the plague): as I understood the procedure I was to have used their basket and then transferred the purchased groceries from the basket into my bag outside at the table erected for that purpose. My bag was not to have touched the check-out counter. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if I had ought not to have enclosed it in one of the sterile bags provided... but N. (I ought to know her name after all these years) was plainly making an effort to be patient with the uninitiated shopper and I shook my head 'yes, ma'am' like the best of schoolboys. Since I had the bloody mask, I wore it; a quick glance over all the papers placarded on the front doors and windows didn't seem to require it, however. I could visualize the staring were I without it, and in fact it is a smallish space, particularly given the number of people in and out of it every day.
I had forgotten about Holy Mass in the new rite, the Novus Ordo as it is called (although most people don't even think about its novelties these days). The priest faced the people throughout, amplified (perhaps because of the livestreaming that was done), no ordinary sung nor propers, apart from the read Communion antiphon, nothing sung in fact except the bastardized 'Easter Alleluia'; of course no sequence etc because the Pentecost Octave is suppressed-- it was, evidently, the feast of Saints Marcellinus and Peter, not that you would know this from the Mass. But, on the other hand, no superfluous ministers (the mistress of the livestreaming is the 'pastoral associate', obviously a nice lady as unlike Susan from the Parish Council as it is possible to be), strict attention to the rubrics, a gesture or two toward the Traditional Rite (burse and chalice veil, the prayer to St Michael after Mass, etc). Considering all the horrendous abuses and nonsense that happen in some places, St Mary's is an island of peace and good order. And Father Guillen-Vega's sermon was careful, organized, to the point, and brief.
A couple of parishioners were maskless, and were admitted even in that state of déshabillé, so someone is exercising sound judgment about such things. I eventually, during the first lesson, put mine away, too. And nobody-- certainly not I-- brought up the cleaning business. I caught a glimpse of the list of the blessed and it looked like there were perhaps 17 or 18 names on it; I didn't count, explicitly, but there were closer to ten people present than twenty. Hmm.
In the Traditional Rite, that Alleluia precedes the sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus during the Octave.
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