I was running along Capitol, for my health, for those endorphins. I was running for longevity. I run slowly, listening to funny old songs on random playlists. "Too Many Fish in the Sea" by the Marvelettes or "Monkey Man" by Toots and the Maytals. It helps, running does. It helps stave off the emotional fragility that comes with age and fear. So I was running. And there, on the sidewalk by a boring state building, was this poor dead woodpecker. Beautiful and lifeless. Nothing about him hinted at a cause of death. He had not been mauled by a predator. He looked neither scrawny nor sick. He was more than a block from the tall Capitol Park trees where I've watched woodpeckers pound their beaks into the mottled bark of native sycamores. I ruled out falling.
I fought back tears as I eventually resumed my plodding jog. I was running to stave off death. I was running for that "natural high." Yet here was death, reminding me that it cannot be outrun, even for the most beautiful of creatures. I had not staved off the emotional fragility that comes with age and fear. I had run smack into it.
I kept going. I circled the park and headed for midtown. I ended the run at a farmer's market where, on a typical Saturday, I would celebrate the end of the run with peaches and strawberries. Healthy, healthy. But on this morning I bought a dozen lumpia doused in sweet red sauce, which I ate while listening to a young man with an electric guitar sing "Royals" by Lorde. Fuck it. Fuck that bird. Fuck an early death on a downtown sidewalk. Fuck Donald Trump (throwing him in for good measure). I'll live a long long time and I'll run real slow and I'll eat lumpia if I want to.
Let me live that fantasy.
