05.03.20

i thought for a week or so that i was accumulating soot as i ran errands and walked up to the rubber track ten blocks north of houston, but i appear to be developing...a tan? the speckled filth on my forehead and cheeks is definitely freckles, and joe says the back of my neck has lost its customary translucence. i was decent about getting out of the house in the before times — though i worked out indoors, i made it into the neighborhood at least once a day, and i walked to soho for my weekly bookstore shifts and to and from chinatown to catch the subway up to the bird hospital — but i guess, surprise surprise, taking a daily late-afternoon walk with joe and, now, spending an hour a day up at the track is, despite the mostly-grey-and-rainy weather we've been having, the sort of thing that toasts a gal. i wish i could report that this stirred something in me, but it's just a thing, like the acne i've been getting from my masks and the welts i get under my breasts when i run several days in a row.

i run all the days in a row, now; it's about a mile up to the track, which is just enough time to make respectable progress on my pokémon situation (david bowie, my gyarados, is such a powerful boy) before lurching through a minimum of 13 jogged laps and a lot of strolling. the track surface mimics the spring of my beloved treadmills, i have the lanes more or less to myself when it's windy and/or raining, and the strip of grass between me and the east river promenade teems with fledgling robins and juvenile squirrels (who have yet to learn, a month in, that there's no angle in dashing across the track to forage for food on the astroturf at its center). when i'm facing north i can see the power station that blew during hurricane sandy and denied us electricity for a week; when i loop around south the williamsburg bridge eats the horizon. i couldn't tell you why ferry traffic has been up for the past two months, but i swear that it has, and racing the boats up- and downriver is delightful, even though i always, always lose. on the best days they carry salt air up from the harbor. i am wearing a neon fanny pack without irony. send help.