.A first for Maria and me tonight, we saw our friends Friday night, without leaving the computer in my office.

There are a lot of scary things about the coronavirus for me, one is the idea that our culture will go through another of its periodic upheavals and social isolation (American Style) will become normalized, will be our future.

We have not seen our friends Ellen and John since before the great shelter-in-place took effect, both in Vermont, where they live and upstate New York, where we live. We’ve known John and Ellen for a few years, but only got together with them a couple of months ago, and a different world ago.

We enjoy their company; they are both smart, funny, and full of ideas. The last time we saw them, it was at our farmhouse for dinner, and we were up late talking for hours.

We can’t be socializing now, we all are pretty housebound except for food shopping, so Maria and I went into my study with its big-screen computer and set up a Zoom video conference.

This is astonishingly easy. Staying away from people has never been easier. If this Pandemic goes on too much longer, lots of people may just drop being with people altogether. I suppose we’ve been moving in this direction for years.

You download the Zoom app and set up a meeting, all you need is the e-mail of the other participants, and there they are – the picture is clear, the sound is excellent.

We had fun; we talked for several hours about the Pandemic, our lives, art, and creativity. We talked a bit about politics and the cultural war between Governor Cuomo and President Trump.

It was surprisingly comfortable and relaxed, of course. Nobody had to drive out in the rain, use our fossil fuel, waste electricity from an oven or outdoor lights,  or leave the warm comfort of our farmhouse on this chilly night.

The conversation flowed smoothly and was lively, as it always is with Ellen and John.

Maria and I enjoyed it very much.

I did have the sense that we were witnessing something historic, something much larger than ourselves, a cosmic consequence of the idea of Social Isolation, the new government, and medical sanctioned demand for all of us citizens to stay away from another and do our civic duty by avoiding each other.

This is the way they talk in all the sci-fi movies, isn’t it? On various tele-screens.?

Overnight, avoiding people went from being sad and neurotic to being noble and necessary.

If you insisted on being alone, you were a hermit or anti-social. Now, if you are with people, you are a danger to ourselves and others.

It’s not really new.

Younger people have been doing this for years, and the old farts really didn’t really like it. Now the old farts who have been called to the new screen social life and the civic responsibility of staying away one another.

Many are liking it.

In a divided nation,  does this bring us together or pull us farther apart?

I accept that this is both justified and necessary right now, but I know that when society changes for any length of time, it rarely goes back to the way it was – just think 911.

Were we just making the best of a bad situation, or is this the way we will talk to our friends and neighbors in the future.

We didn’t waste gas, need the GPS, check the time; we didn’t have to cook or even stand up. Do we get to know Ellen and John in the same way we would know them if we were sitting face to face?

I think not. The evening was lovely, we both want to do it again. We do not want to lose touch with these exciting people.

But for me, something was missing.  It came to me later. It was John and Ellen. Their faces, their expressions, their constant whispers to one another, the look in their eyes, a sense of seeing into the soul a bit.

The screen is a marvel, but it is not human and is not the same as being human. For a while, it will just have to do. But I hope I never get too used to it.