Every day is the same, and the sameness is grinding. I’m incredibly routinized in general, and it took me only a few days to have a brand new quarantine routine. I still get up at the same time every day, but instead of commuting to work I read a book for awhile and then dither around on the internet. I next join my 8am Zoom Cat Chat group and then my Zoom writing group and attempt to put words on the page for two hours. That’s what I’m doing right now–putting words down for a little bit of time every day. This morning’s words are here.
I can’t tell if this stay-at-home thing is getting to feel normal. I’m not gripped with fear and panic like I was three weeks ago, but I still can’t look more than a few days ahead. I’ve got to snap out of that at some point, because this isn’t only a present disaster. It’s a past disaster–we see that in the disproportionate rate of death facing communities long marginalized from access to the things that make your immune system strong: access to primary health care and nourishing food, time for sleep, and the financial ability to actually stay at home.
Looking up at a window at Chesapeake Commons at Howard & Centre Streets
It is an absolutely beautiful day in Baltimore, and it sucks to have to spend most of it inside. Outside feels increasingly dangerous to me. I think it’s the new relatively new call to wear a mask when outside. It’s an acknowledgement that this virus is invisible and could be hanging in the air anywhere, that not even standing all by yourself on a street corner is guard against it. And the masks we’re told to make ourselves, out of cotton, maybe with a coffee or furnace filter stuck in there, will only stop a relatively small percentage of those viruses from getting in. Wear a mask, but not a mask that actually works, because those are (absolutely rightly!) for folks working directly with patients.
I didn’t have a lot of time for a bike ride on Friday, thanks to a writing date, a phone call, and a couple of meetings that broke up my day. Friday was the end of week three of this stay-inside-work-from-home business, and parts of my life are moving along in deceptively normal ways. The deception is that it’s normal.
Tuesday had a little bit of sun, and after a long day of work–I’m still working–I decided to get out for a run, so this post is about something I saw on my run that day. I headed out and east, no real destination. I ended up running down Gorsuch to say hi to where R. used to live. She moved away a few years ago, but Gorsuch will always remind me of her, our time in her backyard, admiring her cat, talking about bikes and queers and popcorn and art. I miss her, even though I still talk to her all the time. It was good to say hello.
I took a bike ride on Friday, heading over to Bolton Hill to peek through the window and say hi to S., who has been on total lockdown and under the weather for nearly two weeks. She also promised a lot of good looking flower trees–my favorite spring treat–in exchange, and I was not disappointed. I also got to use the protected bike lane along Mount Royal Avenue for the first time. It’s great that it’s there, but it’s so short. Alas.
After I left S.’s place, I made a quick stop at the hardware store–it was closed–and then rode around West Baltimore for a bit. Because I haven’t been riding much other than to go to and from work, I hadn’t been over here in quite awhile. The quick changes of Baltimore neighborhoods are especially stark in Bolton Hill, where a few blocks later you are in Marble Hill, and then you’re in West Baltimore, one of the most disenfranchised parts of the city. I can’t describe the shift, but trust me–it is profound, and dissonant.
I rode around with no real destination, taking turns when I wanted to, looking to see if I could see what COVID-19 looks like here, but it just looked like a spring Friday afternoon–flower trees like the ones in this picture blooming, people out strolling, small crowds near the doors of corner stores, people sitting on their stoops. I said my how you doin’s, got the nods back, and one guy yelled after me, “Hey, is it bike party?” I yelled back, “Personal bike party! Just me on my bike!” White people riding bikes over here likely mostly only happens when it’s Bike Party.
I remembered my first bike ride to the Poe House in southwest Baltimore. I couldn’t find it and just kept pedaling up and down the blocks until a guy yelled out, “It’s right over there, end of the block.” No reason I’d be there other than that. Racial and class segregation is real here, and if you don’t see it, you aren’t looking.
My next trip outside was my long run on Sunday–a whole six miles. My habit is to start my run going uphill to save the downhill for the second half of the run, so I’m often running up into Guilford and Roland Park. These neighborhoods are on another planet from where I was biking on Friday. Mansions, expansive lawns tended by people who don’t live here, tidy private gardens, street names like “Greenway,” “Rugby,” and “Tuscany,” it’s hard to believe I’m just a few miles from home.
I took this picture of flowering trees as I ran down Blythewood to see where it ended:
Flower tree and fancy house along Blythewood
The background for this tree is so different than the one in my other picture. What COVID-19 means up here is so different from what it means over there. A virus doesn’t discriminate, but people do, and some of us have roomy homes to shelter in, big yards to exercise in, ways to safely and comfortably be outside, access to health care that sets us up to survive the virus better than others. A six mile circuit from my house will swing me through 20 years of life expectancy. That was true before this virus, and I fear it will be true after, if we don’t use this crisis to make a different world. I know others plan to use this crisis for an even greater consolidation of wealth.
Today Governor Hogan declared a stay-at-home order. I can still run and ride my bike alone, so I’ll still be out there. And I am exceedingly aware of the privilege I have for my worry to be whether or not I can do those things. Figuring out how to pay rent, how to get groceries when you aren’t supposed to take public transit, how to teach kids while working from home yourself, how to take care of oneself when sickness hits…staying at home means such different things to people, and remembering that will hopefully help us help each other in the ways we need to be helped. So many cracks to fall through right now, we have to step lightly.
Flowering Tree Along the Gwynns Falls Trail in Middle Branch Park
The sun came out on Tuesday, and it had a profound effect on my mood after a gray and rainy Monday. So much feels gray and rainy that when the skies are like that too, I get a bit overwhelmed with it. But like all feelings, the sadness of Monday melted away to the relative good cheer of Tuesday, made even better by “seeing” some of my students in our online class meetings that morning.
And then I was utterly exhausted. It is going to take me a minute to get in shape for this.
Military Police Vehicles in the M&T Bank Stadium Parking Lot
This Saturday feels remarkably similar to most of my Saturdays. I woke up earlier than I wanted to wake up, alternated between reading and staring at my phone, took a couple of pictures of my cat snoozing hard on my wife who was also snoozing hard, and then finally got up and made coffee and breakfast. She usually makes coffee on Saturdays–sign one that things are different.
Johns Hopkins Department of the History of Medicine on Monument & Washington
Time has already become almost meaningless, and yesterday it was only Wednesday of our first week on lockdown. I’m sure I’ll adjust to all this, but I’m not adjusted yet, not even close. The morning was good–I started off with a Zoom writing group with professors, started by a friend from my Tulane days. It was so good to see some friendly faces, have a chat about our work, and then actually focus for a few decent stretches of time. Time is everywhere and nowhere right now, so to be able to get some thinking done in the stretch of it was a nice break.
The Gwynns Falls Trail Alongside the RESCO Plant on Russell Street
It’s Monday, but wow, it feels like we’re off the calendar altogether. This is my spring break, and I’d planned to spend it in upstate New York, visiting Harriet Tubman’s old house, stopping by Seneca Falls, and touring John Brown’s Farm, maybe a quick zip down the old Olympic bobsled course in Lake Placid, weather depending. And I was looking forward to space to read and write, all by myself. Less than a week ago I was crowdsourcing travel stops. Wow, that seems quaint now.
What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today 