Late last week, I took a taxi into town and went into the office to pick up some essentials. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly. I’ve been asymptomatic and extremely careful this whole time; when I’ve been outside, I’ve been no more than twenty paces down the road to the little Sainsburys, and I’ve been almost comedically thoroughgoing about keeping away from people. On my last trip out for groceries, a stranger and I lurched like repelling magnets away from one another in the cereal aisle, laughing the whole time: nothing personal! It’s wild that the way I am typically compelled to behave in public has become both universal and absurd.
I picked up what I needed from the office, which was a miniature museum to a world that feels very far away. My computer came on when I nudged against the mouse. I powered it down properly with my heart in my throat, and tried to set aside the awful feeling of finality, reasoning that I could work through that when I’d made it safely home.
Then I walked back.
Before all this, I was trying to form the habit of walking home from work. I wasn’t doing very well. I don’t have good walking shoes for cities; my hiking trainers lose their grip if I use them on concrete paths, and my cheap Primark trainers are so unsupportive of my stupid high-instepped feet that I can walk for maybe ten minutes before my calves turn against me. I went out in my Doc Martens, this time, which rubbed my feet to blisters, but which didn’t cause me actual pain on the walk itself. I trudged down Parks Road, past the Museum of Natural History, with only a brief pause to look at the deserted courtyard, dazzling under the sun.
A long time ago, when I was newly employed by the University, I had cause to visit the Museum of Natural History before it opened for the day. That was in the autumn, first thing on a cold and foggy morning, and the silence of the museum felt like a precious, stolen thing. I could never visit for long, usually; the crowds were painful to be around, the chaos impossible to navigate comfortably. That morning, I walked around the maze of fossils and skeletons like I was walking through a cathedral, stricken speechless with wonder at the world. It’s one of the things I will always remember, when I eventually leave Oxford behind — the high arches of the ceiling, the shadows of bones falling to the cold stone floor.
It feels insultingly obvious to try to explain why that moment felt like a gift, and this new and different silence felt eviscerating.
I walked through University Parks. I watched strangers on the grass, oceans of distance between each one. I took photographs of the flowers lining my path, and I smiled at a dog I couldn’t pet. I walked north, to my house; I watched a mother and baby cross the road to keep an appropriate space away from me. I saw signs in doorways and on fences — closed due to Covid-19; closed for the foreseeable future; stay home, save lives. A thousand environmental storytellers punched the air, someplace else. I got home; I washed my hands; I cried for an hour, mourning all the things I could never have imagined I’d miss.
I feel better when I’m at home. So many people I know are clinging to their daily walks, and I get it, but I truly do feel worse when I can’t hold myself at a safe remove from the outside world. There’s something normal, for me, about being home; as I said in my first letter, that’s how I’ve been living for a while, around the daily commitments of work. But there’s no way to feel reliably good about outside. If it’s too quiet, then the world might as well have ended; if it’s too crowded, then the world is ending, and there’s still worse to come. And no matter what, I see all the places I used to visit without a second thought, and my whole heart locks up tight with grief. The office, for God’s sake. I was so ready to take a week off, a month ago, that if you’d told me I’d ever find myself crying for the office I’d have laughed in your face.
I know we are supposed to be imagining new ways to live, when this is over. (It’s still ‘when.’ It has to be.) I really am trying to be as positive as I can, in this letter and in general! But I am also trying to give myself room for grieving, which is happening unpredictably and erratically, in and around my efforts to stay busy. A loss is a loss, no matter what it will eventually become. I’m doing my goddamn best with what I have.
W