16 April 2020, 12:45 pm - In Which I Pretend I Am On The Road

We have spent so much time inside, we forgot what fresh air smelled like. Okay, not really, but it feels that way when the weather turns frigid and it will not stop raining. Yesterday I went for a walk despite the cold, just to get outside. I walked my usual route, which is a two-mile loop around my neighborhood that meanders through a large park. Usually, the park is full of disc golf players, but it was desolate. The picnic areas and children’s playground were wrapped in yellow “Do Not Cross” tape, and signs are posted nearby inform people that they are not allowed to use or linger in the areas due to the stay-at-home order. The playground looks like the site of a heinous crime, like a murder or some other tragedy. Honestly, it felt like being in a post-apocalyptic world, specifically Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Not only was I traveling on a road, but it was cold, and any time I would cross paths with another traveler, we would take wide berths around each other. We did not speak to one another, and we rarely made eye contact. It felt like we were on a pointless mission to look for something, anything, that might break the boredom of quarantine routine.

While on my walk, I delivered a farewell card to a friend who is moving to Wisconsin. It is very bittersweet because we cannot celebrate as we would normally do - dinner, dessert, and a trip to the pub. Instead, we are sending each other little notes on our social media channels and mourning the moments we cannot have.

Today (April 16), it is raining. My partner and I needed to work independently to complete work and school doings. We’ve been trying to spend time apart (as far as we can in a tiny house) so that we have more things to discuss at the end of the day. It helps that he sometimes takes a solo trip to his photography studio to work one things he could not bring home. This is how we have been coping with spending literally 24/7 together.

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McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. Vintage Books Ltd., 2006.