As much as it pains me to admit it, you really can't live on posting alone

I went for a walk today. It was the first time I've left my house longer than a trip to the grocery store in a week, I think? I dunno. The days have become more than a little permeable. I was on the way to meet my girlfriend Olivia, and the plan was for us to do a little walking around near the very old cemetery we both live by. (It's a park.)

Anyway, as I was walking, the sun hadn't really started setting at all and wow, everything was beautiful. It was the kind of light that gilds — like I was walking on the sidewalk by the graves, and I was kind of struck by how everything suddenly felt so profound. Honestly, I thought I was going to be having these ~ revelations ~ alone, but I was wrong: there were a ton of people out! Lots of families with little children — who I gave kind of a wide berth to, because judging by the parents I know kids are pretty good disease vectors — and couples out for a walk, and then single people with dogs. Cars were ferrying people places. One guy even had his windows down, because the weather was truly beautiful.

I hadn't seen humans in days, and I was kind of startled. I've been inside reading Twitter for so long I didn't realize it wasn't I Am Legend out there. And it's not: life has continued. The bodegas are open; so was one auto body shop. A guy was grilling outside, like it was a normal, unusually springlike day in March.

The sidewalk I was walking on cracked up eventually, giving way to the roots of the big trees in the cemetery. Along with the usual spattering of broken glass bottles, I saw some nitrile (?) gloves, and one abandoned face mask. I think the most poignant thing I saw was a full, abandoned pack of Marlboro Reds sitting crushed on the sidewalk. At first I thought that person picked the wrong week to quit, but then I thought about it more. COVID-19 is a respiratory disease that affects and scars the lungs; the person probably read something to that effect online, maybe on Twitter, mid-smoke, and was like: oh shit, I've made a mistake. I can't smoke inside, anyway.

It's crazy how many things there are that can kill you. I was thinking about this earlier, because I saw a post from my friend Jenn that reminded me that food poisoning exists, and that it's remarkably easy to get if you're not careful. That you also sometimes run a fever when you have it wasn't lost on me. Living is figuring out your tolerance for risk. Or to put it another way, life happens during those times you forget how much danger you're in, how much risk you've already taken on. Right? Nobody's ever thinking about how not washing their cutting boards well enough could maybe put them in the hospital. The risks you forget are the ones you've deemed acceptable.

Which is why I've found it really hard to adapt to the coronavirus situation, at least mentally. (Physically my ass is at home.) It's hard not to notice/hear my neighbors coughing through our thin-ish walls, for example, and wonder darkly about what they've brought inside with them. When I was leaving my apartment for this walk I touched the door handles I normally do, and was then hyper aware of my hands. I did not touch my face. I was like: what if this is how I get it? And my hands felt like they were burning, a little, except without any pain because the fire was mental. I've gotten very good at washing my hands for the full twenty seconds, mostly by singing the Pokémon anime theme song to myself. (If you sing up to the first "Pokémon" of the chorus, you've hit 25 seconds.) I am so much more aware of my human body, these days.

It was nice walking around with Olivia; I calmed down. I didn't look at my phone. I felt, for the first time, a moment of inner peace. Partly that's because I hadn't walked more than, like, 100 steps in a day since I'd begun panicking about getting infected, but it was also because she is a very calming presence. Steady. I think I would also classify myself as an extrovert, and seeing other people in person makes me feel normal again. I am taking this whole thing pretty hard.

The sun was setting when I started back toward my apartment, and things were orangey and purple, like a bruised, possibly rotten fruit. My nose was running because of the ambient pollen in the air, and it was killing me. I saw a couple in their thirties by the shuttered public middle school; they were kind of canoodling, and it was kind of beautiful because everything felt cinematic. (I was also listening to the new Jay Electronica album, which makes everything feel meaningful.) I touched my door handles again, and then sung Pokémon to myself again. The first interview I ever did for any publication was in college, with Jason Paige, the guy who sung that. He's been suing Nintendo and losing for years because they stiffed him on the fee. I think he told me they paid him something like, what, 2 grand?