Pandemic Walks Have Made Us All Like Victorian Children

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I experience, while walking during a global pandemic, what I can only call road rage. Animal-like, I become viscerally aware of the distance between me and every other person, alive with fury at any encroachment. The presence of billions of invisible particles, real and imagined, makes every moment pregnant with possible tragedy.

If I walk behind someone, am I in their germ path? I hold my breath as a toddler passes by, I step into the street to avoid the invisible spray of a jogger’s breath, even if it means walking into oncoming traffic. I can swing from mask-crusader to anti-masker in the space of a block: If I have my mask off for a moment, it’s reasonable; if someone else does it, it’s proof of the banality of evil. On a narrow road I walk toward another young woman, and in perfect synchronicity from one foot away, we both step off the sidewalk to let the other pass, and then back on, and then back off, and then both laugh. It’s as if I am encountering myself in a mirror.

Every walk contains a full program of activities. I hit every mini community library in my neighborhood—each, somehow, full of looseleaf magazine recipes from 15 years ago. I pee behind a tree. I feel a strong urge to buy something. Ten minutes into my walk and I have become the woman in the math meme, and my calculations are about whether or not I can buy a $38 candle. I listen to a podcast, and then pause the podcast and turn on a song, and then turn off the song and turn on a new podcast, and then stop to google something.

I attempt to learn a new language while walking. My audio language learning app exclusively teaches me outdated phrases: “Can you tell me where the internet cafe is?” “I need to use the payphone,” and “I am going on vacation.” I FaceTime my friends and then, energized with an almost physically painful disgust at the sight of my own face, I snap, “Please call me back on the phone,” even though I called them. I hike up a hill. I think about how as a woman I have a full-time side gig of hating my body, but right now my ass is looking more amazing by the second, carved into an increasingly fantastic shape as I climb the hill. It must be so incredible to stand behind me, like watching an artist at work on a sculpture. How lucky, how fortunate, for anyone in the vicinity.