oakland wander
Last week, antsy and struggling to focus, I decided to take a walk through Oakland. I started listening to music through my headphones, but I soon shut off the music and used my headphones as earmuffs. I was more interested in the noise of the city—what little of it there was. The streets weren't abandoned, but they were certainly quieter. There's a turn left off of Forbes I often take, but I have to be cautious about it, because cars turning right from the oncoming traffic can't see well around the corner and often endanger pedestrians on the crosswalk. Alex used to pull me away from the crosswalk to cross the street farther, safer down—but now the danger has passed, because hardly any cars are making that turn.
That day, it was chilly, and grey, and damp. I wound my way through deep South O, heading up and down the slight hill of the Boulevard of the Allies, up Parkview, cutting across Semple and then up Bates toward campus. I passed familiar sights that I've seen since my freshman wander days, questing for house parties with friends, but I'd be hard-pressed to find them on my own.
My brain works in paths, not maps—I know where Dawson meets Semple because I passed the intersection every day this summer walking to campus, but if I came at it from any other direction, I'd be taken by surprise by the sudden appearance of the familiar Western Union.
Now, freshman wander days long behind me, the sidewalks were nearly empty. Those who did walk usually wore masks. When I saw someone coming my way, I crossed the street to the opposite sidewalk. If I didn't, the other people usually did instead.
Social distancing measures remind me of how much body language means when out in the world. And social distancing seems to magnify everything you do. Moving to the other side of the street is no longer an innocent decision made simply to get somewhere faster—it is a statement made on the people you're swerving. "I don't trust you," it says. "You may be diseased. Stay away."
Even if I am determined not to interpret it that way, I found myself constantly worried that other people would, and would be offended by my swerving them. Maybe social distancing will become so routine that these negative implications will fade, and we'll all see avoidance more as an act of consideration than condemnation. And maybe this is, as a high school friend used to say, a "me problem"—that most of the world has accepted that the "rudeness" of social distancing is the new way to be polite. How has the pandemic and social distancing changed the way you move and think in public spaces?
That day's sky, nearly white, made everything feel more desolate. Blank, empty streets below blank, empty sky. Stores shuttered, especially sad for local haunts, and the occasional blinking "OPEN" sign in the window of a seemingly deserted shop. In the laundromat near Semple and Ward, a lone woman sat inside, by the window.
I approached campus through Posvar—home of the history department, among a million other departments it seems, and home base for Pitt's GSPIA, for which I'm enrolled for fall 2020. In the wide open spaces of the first and second floors, two smells were perennial—Einstein Bros.' hazelnut coffee and bacon, from their breakfast sandwiches. My spring semester freshman year, I took a class in a lecture hall on the first floor, and sat near the front. Every morning, my professor would walk in with Einstein's coffee, and I could smell the hazelnut from my seat.
As I passed Posvar, I stumbled upon two starships waiting outside one entrance. I'm not sure if they're still operating—the headquarters never looked inhabited, not even while class was in session, and I never see these little delivery robots on the street anymore. But here were a pair neatly lined up, artefacts from pre-pandemic University life.
I wandered through Posvar's courtyard, where a police car sat and a lone student did work at a table, and then crossed the street to walk alongside Schenley Plaza, toward Carnegie Library. I passed a homeless man I recognized. He used to sit at the same armchair on the first floor of the library every day, charging his phone, wearing a large tan coat, surrounded by plastic bags. I wondered if he recognized me, as we were often in that room at the same time. I considered waving, but didn't.
Reached the library, and this was when I began taking photos in earnest. I don't like taking photos in public. It's a combination of (1) an effort to be in the moment and not on my phone, and (2) the fear of being judged as a damn millennial, always taking photos on their phone. One of my biggest and also silliest fears is being caught blocking the path of another pedestrian because I decided to take out my phone and snap a photo—thought tourist in my own city.
But now, with campus so empty, and me, in no rush, I could take photos and enjoy the moment; plus, there were less eyes out to judge. So I indulged.
Despite the pandemic, despite the weather, there were still little bits of spring scattered throughout campus. Daffodils dappling the front of Carnegie Library and Schenley Plaza; tulips in a bed of soil between Forbes and the Law building, a pair of pigeons black and shiny as oil, hopping on the granite around them; trees beginning to bud and bloom. A reminder, like the birdsong I enjoy from my back porch, that nature carries on despite any human catastrophe.
A few weeks ago, before spring break, Alex and I were walking home from the bus stop, down Craft between Forbes and Fifth. In a parking lot, I spotted a deer—and then another one, and another one. Not the first clutch of them I've seen in Oakland, and how dissonant they look here, surrounded by concrete and asphalt. A deadly hazard for drivers, but where else can they go?
A few meters away from Dippy the Dinosaur, a two-story-tall sculpture, I began to feel drops of rain alight on my shoulders and head. So I headed back down Forbes toward home, and, unable to help myself, kept snapping photos along the way.
Stay safe and healthy, and talk to you soon,
—Mia