Running for Our Life

In White Zombie’s 1995 album, Astro Creep, one of the tracks starts with the line “Yeah I remember her saying: I’m already dead. I’m already dead. I’m already dead…”. In my childhood, Comics have influenced my artistic sensibilities. In my youth and young adulthood, heavy, thrash and death metal were among my fond sources of inspiration. White Zombie caught my attention for their masterful stitching of tragedy and mockery. You can’t take them too seriously. Their craft, however, is dead serious. If I’m afraid of dying, I might as well be dead.

The 2020 lockdown made me think that through the shock of the pandemic, humanity was experiencing a simulation of its own death. Not that every individual was afraid of imminently dying. It’s just that each and every one of us must have known at least one person in our lives that was. Considering this mass of individuals, their fear engulfed us on a social scale. Their fear became humanity’s reality. In light of death metal’s sense of logic, if we are afraid of dying, we might as well be dead already.

My own approach to the pandemic was very similar to most people I know. Putting a mask when advised, staying at a safe distance, washing hands and so on. Outdoors was deemed very early on as definitely the safer place to be around other people. Our whole society faced a common burden of intense uncertainty. For those of us who trusted their scientific sources of information, the relative safety of the outdoors provided a welcome window of assurance. I still tried to keep a distance to minimize exposure to other people’s breath. But if someone approached me, the most I did would be to suggest keeping a few feet away. I never had anyone insisting on staying near me on purpose, as if to prove a point.

The fear of death can be exhibited in unexpected ways. It showed itself in one of my first outdoor runs of the lockdown.

The route I take in a run outdoors often changes. I get too bored to run the same route over and over again. My time slots for running vary over different times of the day.

But for a long time, I managed three runs each week. Gradually, I marked a few streets on the map that made up the distance I wanted to cover. The next thing to do was go out.

Most of my runs end in the park – Norquay Park in Vancouver, BC. I live a few blocks away. Ending my runs in the park is a good way of cooling down and stretching. My walk back home becomes part of the process.

Hattie is a regular morning walker of the park. Hattie has a strict routine. She goes clockwise on the path surrounding the park. I typically reach the path from one of the side streets and go counterclockwise. So we pass each other a few times.

I noticed her by the hats she wore, hence her name. Hers were mostly simple military-type hats. Sometimes her hat was black, occasionally beige. Occasionally she had a more pronounced all-around cap. 

On early runs, I would notice her reaching the park at a specific time. From when I started late, I could determine Hattie’s walk time. I always noticed her leaving the park at 7:00 AM. It was safe to assume that she had started her walk at 5:30 AM.

Early on I noticed that she stuck to the dead center of the path. I use the center too. But whenever I approach someone else, I make sure to move a bit to the right. The fraction of a second we are on the same section of the path makes it into very few steps. Then each path user returns to the center in their direction. I can’t remember anyone else, apart from Hattie who wouldn’t allow space for others.

Initially, I didn’t think much of it and ran a few steps on the lawn as we passed each other. Our first encounters date to late 2010, when I started making a routine of my running. My encounters with Hattie became part of my routine. After a few times of stepping aside into the lawn, I started saying good morning or hello. With many other walkers of the neighborhood I exchanged greetings. With Hattie, it was clear she wasn’t into it. She kept walking at the dead center of the path, not saying a word. Her blank gaze became somewhat opaque as we passed each other. One day I decided to check what would happen if I stayed on the path. 

I saw Hattie from a distance. She was walking defiantly as usual. As we came closer to each other, I noticed Hattie’s chin budge ever so slightly higher in the air. Her shoes confidently made their mark in the dead center of the path. I was getting closer. Her arms kept swinging back and forth. I was already on the right edge of the path. We were getting closer to each other. She only budged from the center of the path when I was a step or two away. The woosh from our sleeves almost touching each other competed with the breeze playing with the tall trees around the park.

The next time we were together on the path, I kept to the right again. She seemed to have realized the need to share the path. She still didn’t budge from the dead center until very late into the encounter, but this time her concession came in earlier.

That was strange. Did she really think she had some kind of priority?

I really don’t know her at all. Her name is most probably not Hattie. It was about that time when I started calling her “my friend”. Not to her face. Just in my conversations with my wife after an encounter in the park. The futility of my ‘good mornings’ and ‘hellos’ made me invest some effort in remembering to avoid them. Once or twice, when I didn’t notice it was Hattie and did greet her, I could hear a faint response. She wasn’t mean or anything. I guess her morning walks were the precious time she had for herself in the day. Her choice to avoid contact seemed strange. That’s all.

Then March 2020 dawned on us. It happened just as I was about to say goodbye to the treadmill in the gym. It was pleasantly dry and not too cold to run outside. I was more than happy to get back to my street running routine. With the gradual increase in awareness to what was safe and what not, the outdoors was clearly the winner. No one in the early days imagined that the stay home would last as long as it did. Nevertheless, even the first few days provided incentive enough for many to embark on a renewed enthusiasm with the outdoors.

My approach to the park that first day in the lockdown wasn’t new.

Although I do different routes, they are all variations of a number of sidewalks around my house. Some are more north-south one day and others are more zigzag than others. Eventually, I reach the park from the southwest corner, down a street sloping gently from the south.

I turned to the right in the corner.

As my steps stabilized on the path I noticed Hattie maybe twenty meters away.

She noticed me just a fraction of a second later.

But her reaction was lightning quick. She looked like someone running away from a murderer. Before I could understand what was going on, she was a few meters away from the path in the vacant lawn of the park. It was strange. It was sad, yet I smiled. Here is someone I have a slim chance of ever getting to know, let alone understand. Just a few days before, her whole demeanor was of one who couldn’t care less about anyone around. It was hard to imagine anything other than the pandemic to have shattered her façade. I had reason to believe that she shouldn’t be so alarmed. But there was nothing in that moment that could make a difference. I kept running and Hattie was off to her day.

The pandemic, as its designation implies, reached all corners of the world. Although the toll in actual lives is marginal, the implications are devastating. A global threat to humanity is a powerful reminder of how fragile we actually are. One walker runs in fear. Millions of other human beings express their fear in one way or the other. Just like my engagement with Hattie was a lost cause, so can I imagine millions of others watching their fellow human beings crumble under the weight of fear. The scope of fear transforms it from a feeling into a reality. If our fear of death is so tangible we might as well be dead already. The fact that I am still typing these words is no consolation.

Not that I am mourning anyone or anything. I’m observing this fear of death with a curious mind. Life and death are but a thought in the form of a few letters and words.