Tombs

R and I work out a new route for our run/walk. We’re fatigued from having to zigzag from sidewalk to sidewalk, dodge people constantly, many of them without masks, many of them in groups, blithely oblivious to the insidious, asymptomatic virus undermining world economies and crushing equilibrium. What used to be fun is now a stressful gauntlet. We plan a route that takes us up and down the quieter streets. My Achilles tendinopathy continues to dog my heel so I use the interval timer, five minutes running, five minutes walking, which I wear on my wrist like a watch with an elastic band. The digits have worn away, but I can still feel it vibrate when the five minutes is up. There are a lot of crows. They come swooping over our heads to get our attention and land a few feet ahead, awaiting their peanut. As we proceed down 2^rd Avenue North R digs into her bag of unsalted peanuts and finds the set of house keys we spent hours looking for just as we were about the go to bed nestled among the peanuts. We decide to keep our running and walking confined to a space of a few residential blocks, avoiding the more popular routes on McGraw and 7^th Avenue West, with its panoramic view of the Olympics. There is no snow on the Olympics, which is very strange. They’re normally capped in snow throughout the year. Now they look more like a range of mountains in Arizona, or New Mexico. The decision to confine ourselves to these quieter streets pays off; there are far fewer people to dodge, not as many cars traveling the streets. When we reach the corner of Highland and Bigelow I whistle and a few minutes later the lame crow appears with her two family members. I toss them some peanuts and we cross Bigelow to look at the big chunks of Chinese chestnut tree lying by the stump where they formed a trunk just a few hours ago. 24 trees are slated to come down on Bigelow, many of them dating back to the 1880s. They’ve all succumbed to disease and the stresses of climate change. You can see hollowed out areas in the center of the wooden slabs, evidence of disease. The Chinese chestnuts were once so numerous on Bigelow, their branches arched over the street, creating a tunnel. Most have already been replaced by oak and cherry trees. We shower and have dinner, Greek pasta. Afterward, we watch a documentary on Netflix about the discovery of mummified animals – including a lion cub – in the Saqqara necropolis about 20 miles south of Cairo. Some of the tombs date back to the First Dynasty, 4500 BC. The skeleton of a high-ranking priest named Wahtye who served under King Neferirkare Kakai during the Fifth Dynasty was found along with the skeletal remains of his family, his mother Meretmin, his wife Weretptha, his sons Seshemnefer, Kaiemakhnetier, Sebaib and a daughter named Seket. Tired from last night’s search for the house keys in our apartment, I keep drowsing off. I awake to see men crawling in and out of pits and shafts, dusting off artifacts, little statuettes, speculating on the scene unfolding before them, my eyes opening and closing as it seems I peer out of my own tomb, the plethora of ancient epiphanies and skeletal regrets winking like flashes of gold in the effulgent darkness, then sink back into voluptuous calm, “half in love with easeful death.” And I think of the silhouette of the clipper ship on a cornerstone of the retirement community on 4^th Avenue North. Why a ship? Maybe it’s a metaphor. The people in there are close to passing over, as they say, euphemistically. And isn’t a death a voyage?