july 4/RUN

Today, on COVID DAY 6, I went for a short run!

1.3 miles
neighborhood
70 degrees

Since I’ve been feeling better and restless, I decided to try a little running this morning. The goal was a mile, but I ended up doing a little extra. I was worried that I might have trouble breathing, but I didn’t. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t too hard either.

10 Things (5 present, 5 absent)

  1. At the end of my block, a bird shrieking non-stop, like an alarm. It kept circling above me and shrieking, almost like it was calling out, away! away! away! For a few seconds I wondered if it was going to swoop down and attack me
  2. plastic pipes lining the sidewalk — part of the sewer project they’re doing all summer. Each pipe connected to the next with black cable-ties
  3. the hollow sound of my foot stepping on the wooden platforms placed over the pipes
  4. my favorite halloween house, still for sale
  5. one runner slowly approaching to my left, breathing heavily. He was very slow. I crossed over to the other side of the road, hoping that would make it less irritating (nope). I slowed way down, almost walking, so he could finally pass
  6. no bikers
  7. no rowers
  8. no roller skiers
  9. no river (too far to see it + forgot to even glance across the road in its direction)
  10. entire stretches of the route lost, forgotten — no memory of running past cooper field or the half-finished house that was abandoned for years then finished and now for sale for $800,000

COVID update

Feeling much better. A little stuffed up, but otherwise fine. It’s strange to feel almost normal but still have to mask and quarantine. Tedious. Disruptive. I wonder when I’ll stop testing positive?

2 things to remember

1

Found this list of 5 nature memoirs to check: The Best Nature Memoirs. When I’m done with Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes, I’d like to return to one book on the list — Savoy’s Traces, which I’ve tried to read a few times already. It’s on the Libby app.

2

A note from Christina Sharpe’s amazing book, Ordinary Notes, about the need for white people to shift from guilt to grief, complicity to relation, detachment to entanglement:

a screen shot of Christina Sharpe's Note 46