According my phone’s health app, I walked around 800 miles last year. To me, this sounds like a lot, but the previous year logged more like 1,200 miles, which is – you know – a movement reduction of one-third from year to year. Thanks, pandemic.
Of those 800 miles, I would estimate that at least two-thirds of them were done walking around my local park, which you can get around 3 miles out of if you really try hard to go down every single path. This means I have walked the same park loop at least 180 times in the past year. And that is almost certainly an underestimate, because usually I go around only one of the paths (2 miles) and also the only thing I have done this past year is walk loop after loop after loop around my park. (Except for a few months at the beginning of all of this when I still felt hope and motivation when I ran the loops.)
Anway, let’s go with 180 park laps. It’s a very neat and tidy number, because it averages out to one loop around the park every other day.
November.
Thankfully, given all this repetition, my local park is actually really lovely. It has big old beautiful trees that canopy over the path, something my friend’s dad once called “a cathedral” and which I always think when I walk beneath them. It has a stretch of uphill, which is nice if you are training in some capacity, but also long straight parts for when you’re not. There are tennis courts tucked away at the back, and at the top of the hill there is a very algae covered pond with a statue of a nude woman in the middle. There is also a rose garden in a section of the park that has a brick wall around it that is open during the day.
Of all the things I have been grateful for this past year, my local park cracks the top five. But, like everything I have been grateful for this year – that it is one of a few things, that it was probably two-thirds of everything, that is was a loop on repeat – it has cracked me.
It is like the repetition jokes that are at first funny, and then as they continue are not funny, and then after they have been repeated enough to lose all meaning elicit laughter again. These are called long jokes, a name so perfect for our purposes today that I couldn’t have made it up if I tried. I am finding that after a year of living in our shifted world, this long joke effect applies to almost everything that once brought me joy on the first laugh. Of all the things we have allowed our mismanagement of the pandemic to rob us of, dulling the joyful things is hitting particularly hard lately.
Walking around the park is a delight, but it is also the only activity available and that makes it less delightful. Just like ordering from a restaraunt is a fun treat, but now it is just the alternative to making yourself and your housemate(s) and no one else another meal in lockdown. Or getting your groceries delivered is something nice that feels like its from the future, but its a practical measure to avoid mutant disease strains and also taking away one of your few reasons to leave your home. Or having days off of work, where it is nice to have a break but not so nice as if you had places to go and things to do.
Anyway, I know things are getting better. I know we have “a roadmap”; I know the UK is vaccinating extraordinarily quickly; I know that day on day, we get closer to things getting better. And as I write this, the sun is shining. And I’m hitting save draft so I can go for a walk around my park – a small joy, an endless loop.
reading
I’m reading books this month!
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener, a memoir about the author’s transition from working in the publishing industry to a series of jobs at tech companies and her gradual disillusionment with Silicon Valley.
And Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free by Linda Kay Klein, which is about exactly what the title says.
Not as many articles, but I have been reading:
The dark side of Dubai, an unsustainable desert mirage that was built by slaves. Thanks to Zayn for this link.
This week’s wtf: After last week’s winter storm in Texas that disrupted power and water on a huge scale for the state’s residents, some customers found themselves stuck with energy bills for thousands of dollars. (NYT)
What was the Wing? (The Cut)
cooking
After a failed attempt at making corn tortillas, I am using the rest of my masa harina to make this empanada recipe, a recommendation from my SIL. I am also baking this citrus cake recipe by Alicia Kennedy, whose newsletter I recently discovered and which I love.
watching
All of the Marvel movies in chronological order. Yes, I know that there are 23 of them!!!!!!!! I don’t recommend this, unless you – like me – have lost your mind. Now that we are about halfway through this project, I am kind of getting into it. I hate this for me.
a photo by Z. Roohi
Z & M, one year from crashing out hard of their honeymoon in Asia and landing in quarantine jail on our couch, are vaccinated. A karmic reward for living under Israel’s terrible lockdowns that lasted forever and didn’t work.
some advice
hello, I’m so glad you’re here. this is the e. roohi weekly – a misnamed irregular newsletter that lately is just about going insane inside. if you found this newsletter via a link or someone forwarded it to you and you’ve enjoyed it and want to read more, I’d love it if you subscribed – and would love it if you wanted to recommend this newsletter to a friend.