Musings and Imaginings

Dear 2020,

Our time together is drawing to a close. We’ve literally only hours left together. I’d be lying if I said I wished that weren’t the case. And, were I to even attempt such subterfuge, I’m sure you’d see right through it. We know each other far too well for polite platitudes to pass as truths between us.

When we first met, I was so excited. I mean, you were the start of a brand new decade! That’s huge. Or, it seemed so at the time… Plus there was the patterning of your numerical repetition. Who could deny that 2-0-2-0 doesn’t have legit sex appeal? (The answer is no one. Even now, knowing what I know, some sick part of my left brain really digs that number.) And of course, there was all that the potential implied by your final zero. It’s funny, now that I look back with the clear vision that is hindsight, how I only ever considered “potential” as being for desirous happenings.

NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!” Monty Python’s Flying Circus

For those who move through life struggling against change, suffering whiplash each time the Universe makes a mess of their plans, and laying awake at night fearfully imagining what the next jolt will be, 2020 must be one bastard of a year. The sarcastic memes that floated around social media in late March and early April depicting what was in store for humanity for the remainder of this trip around the sun – everything from murder hornets to the arrival of Cthulu – tickled my dark funny bone and made me laugh. Now, though, I find myself cringing just a bit and thinking, “You know, maybe we shouldn’t give the Universe any ideas…”.

Lately I’ve caught myself musing about how this is proving to be a year of crazy big changes. And while 2020 has been transformative on both a global and national scale, the truth is that every year is a year of big changes. As is every month, every week, every day, every hour, every minute. The difference with this particular Big Moment in human experience is that the changes are jarring enough, and there are enough of them, that we’ve been forced to notice. A global pandemic and soaring unemployment and police brutality and racial injustice and an autocrat-admiring U.S. President and a climate emergency were the slap in the face we humans needed to shake off our stupor (at least for a moment) and wake up. And so for the past few months we’ve all been essentially looking around, blinking in stunned confusion, and saying, “Huh, things seem sorta different…”. But change is occurring all the time. Incalculable numbers of births and deaths, be it at the cellular level or the individual animal level or the species level. Changes in ideas and language and scientific knowledge and technology and economies. Changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and remaining polar ice and sea-level height. All are big changes. Massive changes. But for the most part they slip past us completely or take place at the periphery of our attention. Without question, this year caught us all sleepwalking. And then it woke us right the hell up.

There are all kinds of courage,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

As of this posting, the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has killed hundreds of thousands worldwide. It has sickened millions. It has rocked governments and brought the global economy to its knees. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. While there may be small pockets of people blissfully unaware of the pandemic we are facing, anyone connected enough to be reading this little blog is well aware of the virus behind quarantines and social distancing and shortages and unemployment and so much fear. For months it felt as though the world had ground to a halt.

And then on May 25, George Floyd, a 46 year old Black man, was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer. When the video of a smug Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds was released, America wasn’t busy with graduation parties or heading off for summer vacations. America wasn’t packed into baseball stadiums or waiting in lines at theme parks. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, America had nothing but time. And America was damn sure paying attention. The murder of George Floyd occurred on the same day that a white woman in Central Park called police on a Black birder after he asked that she leash her dog. And it followed the March 13 shooting death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, KY by plain clothes officers executing a no-knock warrant. It followed the February lynching of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man out for a run; despite clear video evidence, Gregory McMichael (a former cop) and his son Travis McMichael were not arrested until May, and only then after a public outcry demanded it. It followed the murders of so many Black Americans at the hands of white cops over too many years. George Floyd’s murder was a breaking point. In America, the quiet of quarantine was replaced by the roar of reckoning.

I have found that I often feel small in big moments. Torn between the desire to take action and a heavy sense of insignificance, a momentary paralysis binds me. And so it is no surprise that my desire to join protesters has become all sorts of tangled with my fear of becoming a vector for COVID-19. Images of Americans of all races, ages, and genders standing up to police brutality makes my heart swell with pride and love. But there is also shame. Shame that I am not among them. Shame that I am choosing to follow social distancing guidelines over standing up to state-sponsored violence. Shame that, as an introvert by nature, I am perhaps even relieved to have the pandemic as an excuse to not join the masses.

“That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they’d never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind’s first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle–behold, the Running Man. Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn’t live to love anything else. And like everything else we love–everything we sentimentally call our ‘passions’ and ‘desires’ it’s really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We’re all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.”

Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

I’ve run for as long as I can remember. At first, I ran as all children do: I ran to avoid being tagged; I ran to find the best hiding space; I ran after balls and away from balls and towards the dinner table. There were races, of course. Spur of the moment contests of speed in the neighborhood through a great-many front yards, or whistle-start sprints as part of gym class, or races to be first in line for the ice cream truck. When my brother and I were quite young Dad entered us in the Children’s One Mile Run as part of the Revco Marathon event in downtown Cleveland. The main thing I remember was that it finished in a mad dash through the Higbee’s department store. There were balloons down the straight-away in the cosmetics department, and when we crossed the finish line we received a ticket redeemable for an ice cream sundae. No training is required for the races of children. There exists no fear of not making the distance. Running is as much a part of children’s blood as is the hemoglobin that transports the oxygen that lets them run faster and faster and faster still. Only children are regularly admonished for running: No running in school hallways; No running around the pool; No running through parking lots. It saddens me that most adults have lost the sheer fun and the freedom that are the very nature of running. It gladdens me that I am not one of them.