Full Swing
I chopped down the old-fashioned lilac. It was probably 50 years old and had become diseased and scraggly. I started out by using a hand saw to take down the smaller trunks around the periphery and then got to the four main old-growth trunks in the center. I needed better access to one of the trunks, so I took an axe to it. There is something oddly congruent, if not quite poetic, about cutting down a tree with a wood-handled axe.
Lilac is either a fairly hard wood or it could be that I haven’t sharpened my axe. In any case, I was working low to the ground, so bending at the knees is required for each swing. But then as I established a feel for this specific task/target it encouraged a bit more force and I found myself really laying into it. I don’t often have permission or occasion to do something as hard as I can, so it’s a kinesthetic treat. The rhythm I adopted was structured by the technique: chambering my arms up past my right shoulder, axe well behind me, spine twisted to the right and legs mostly straightened: coiled clockwise. Then dropping my weight by bending at the knees, sinking my hips and returning my shoulders toward the trunk as my arms pull down at an angle to land each blow at about a 45 degree angle to the trunk. Every muscle involved, producing force to either move or stabilize a body part; continuous feedback from my eyes coordinating the strikes.
If you pay attention, you can feel your body do all these things more or less automatically. You simply run out of strength if you only use your arms to do the work, so if you’re intent on getting the job done, the rest of you gets involved whether you realize it or not.
It’s a gift to be able to bring our whole body to a task, even if it isn’t quite as vigorous or ballistic. Feeling so many different sensations and forces, hands and eyes coordinated—no, more than coordinated: unified. A few moments of flow in a vigorous movement. How often do we get to use our entire body to do something like that?
Self-Titled
Thoughts have a knotty quality to them: they can be problems or solutions. It requires persistence and skill to either untangle them or to form them into something coherent and useful. They can be beautiful, awkward, impossible... And writing is a tool for working with them. And going for a walk can be, too, or maybe just sitting and stirring the coals of a fire: thinking without thinking. (Fire is, of course, profoundly meditative: the play of heat and light and smoke in response to prodding and poking and nudging.)
It was warm today—an excellent Fall day by any standard. As we drove home from an errand this afternoon, we stopped to admire two Sandhill cranes picking their way along the side of the road, scarcely far enough away from our car for social distancing. But they are watchful, observant. It is fascinating how their heads extend out in front of them, probing, then freeze in position while the rest of their body takes a step or two to catch up.
I tried to write in a journal while sitting outside this evening, the journal in my lap. I can’t. My penmanship is abject to begin with, never mind the geometric difficulties of not using a table. I cannot get comfortable, I cannot steady my hand, I cannot possibly make efficient use of the page. I cannot remember with certainty how to spell ‘necessary’ without spellcheck anymore. And it occurs to me that much techno-luxury seems to be sold with the idea of doing things in places you shouldn’t be doing them: taking a phone call in the bath, typing a memo during a massage, planning your next vacation from a hot air balloon ride. I guess there’s something alluring about solving a problem so effortlessly that you can also be partially engaged in recreational activities.
Finishing up that presentation on horseback while enjoying a mint julep, or designing a spaceship while rolling up the garden hose...
Anyway, writing in my journal provided a feedback loop: me holding the pen, pressing against it. The pen pressing against the page, which yields and accepts strokes of blue ink. The blue ink reflecting a bit of lingering sunlight back into my eyes, which are trying to untangle the thoughts pushing on the pen. The pen: a marlinspike for my thoughts. The cranes have amazing, long, sharp beaks—also like marlinspikes. It’s hopeless, but not serious.
Tonight we had warmed-up leftovers in front of a campfire instead of a television, the rapid evening chill on the back of our necks in the absence of the Sun; and the Moon and Venus next to each other, bright white conversationalists against the deep blue twilight. On the opposite side of the spectrum from our campfire and our darkening back yard.
I tried reading Walden once and found Thoreau to be mostly tedious, but I do keep coming back to something that resonates with me:
“I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is well adapted to our weakness as our strength.”
I want to believe this very much.
Clarity
Clarity might only arrive afterward: after you’ve done the work.
After you’ve written the email/article/book and revised it and sent it. After you’ve cooked the meal and re-seasoned it and eaten it with your family or guests. After you’ve started the workout and tweaked it and finished it.
Getting there is a pain in the ass because the silly thing won’t usually just tell you what it wants to be. You have to see what it responds to, what encourages it, what helps it thrive or come alive. It’s drawn to action and activity. It’s curious about what you think it is—or what it could be. It is patient. It may change its mind…
But it won’t even sniff around if there’s no scent to pick up on.
An Acquired Taste
My sister believes that people who comment that they like to eat or drink something exotic or unexpected and say that “it’s an acquired taste” are simply being pretentious asshats. (I suspect she’s often right.) And sometimes it doesn’t have to be unusual: even Alton Brown has said that coffee objectively does not taste good—it takes some getting used to.
I had some chocolate ganache spread over graham crackers while sipping a dram of Irish whiskey tonight, trying to think of something to write. I could blame the odd combination on trying to use up random foodstuffs because, y’know, quarantine, but really I would probably think that sounded good almost any Thursday evening. I actually prefer heavily peated Scotch and Mezcal, so I guess I like candy and smoky gasoline.
I didn’t start drinking until my 30’s. A colleague talked me into going to my first Scotch tasting, knowing that I didn’t drink anything alcoholic because to me it all tasted bad. I resisted quite a bit and only reluctantly and haltingly tried each whiskey on offer. I ended up really liking a 10yr Aberlour and not much else. Shortly after that, Laphroig and Lagavulin became my favorites. Go figure.
Coffee is another drink that someone (my wife-to-be) tricked me into liking via the gateway drug of lattes with breakfast. Now I only drink it black: French press, Moka pot, Aeropress, pour over, espresso. (I prefer to enjoy my coffee and dessert in separate vessels.)
I don’t understand these developments of my palette, but I’ve come by them as honestly as I have unexpectedly. They are pleasant surprises: perhaps not so much acquisitions as curious inheritances.
Off Leash
On our walk tonight, my wife and I came across a woman walking her cat, off-leash—a beautiful grey tabby. We have 2 cats—neither of them well-behaved enough to be outside at all, much less taken for an untethered walk.
Cats are tricky creatures. They purr and sleep and look cute. To be sure, some are more social or affectionate than others but they are, I believe, wild animals that have fooled us into thinking we need to take care of them.
They form routines and habits that are difficult to break, they effortlessly resist training of any kind, and their instinct to stalk and hunt is always just beneath the surface; just one slow blink away.
The grey tabby may have been taking her owner for a walk. Good for both of them.
“Blocks” of Writing, Moving and Eating
“I don’t feel like exercising” is the movement equivalent of writer’s block.
Caveat: if your exercise of choice is something stupid or you absolutely hate it, please choose a different exercise/activity. Just sayin’: you will never see me at a spin class.
If you started moving just a little bit—y’know, put on some athlesiure wear and walk over to the thing where you do your thing—it wouldn’t feel awful. You’d be OK. If you then did your exercise of choice slowly, even half-assed, it wouldn’t be a big deal and it probably wouldn’t feel awful. (Note that at this point, you have already won) If you kept at it for 5 minutes or so, you might even start to get into it. (Again: winning) From here on out, it’s simply a matter of degree: on a scale of 1 to Captain America, how do you feel? Some workouts just don’t feel that great. Most are, by de!nition, average. You get a couple here and there that make you feel like a tiger. It’s all on a continuum.
The Russians have a saying, “Appetite comes with eating.” They’re on to something: they’re called appetizers. An eating warm-up, as it were...
Leverage Happens at a Distance
Human language—real human language—happens in the mouth and the throat, not on the page, not on the screen. Face-to-face, back and forth between two mouths and four ears, in real time.
Fresh foods, simply prepared, is what some people would call real human food: unprocessed, unpackaged, free of preservatives. And possibly prepared by a family member a few hours earlier.
Real human movement, from our first cries as a baby, to cradling a baby in our arms, to simple walking while carrying a jug of water or bundle of sticks, happens within arm’s length with the force that our arms can provide, for results that are tangible.
Technology makes all three of these things more powerful and/or accessible through leverage, from the words you’re reading now to frozen pizzas to bulldozers. In exchange for money, we can get more benefit for less effort. But without care and attention, we’re further from the people we connect with, the food we eat and even our own bodies.
Leverage is a fine thing, and I wouldn’t do without it, but leverage happens at a distance.
Stand in the Place that You Work
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist REM lyrics for this)
I’m very lucky to have a desk at work that raises and lowers so that I can either sit or stand, depending on what I’m doing or how I’m feeling. My home office, however, has a simple table and chair, so I have to get up in order to move around and stretch throughout the day.
What I’m coming to appreciate more and more is that if I stand at my desk (or anywhere else), I’m always moving a little bit. I’m shifting my weight from side to side or twisting a little at the waist or maybe doing a little back bend to help straighten up a bit more. Sitting down discourages most movements below the waist–otherwise you’d risk standing up or falling out of your chair. Standing affords the opportunity to move in a lot of other ways more quickly, without having to get up out of a chair first. I can even squat down, bend at the hips, stand on one leg or hop up and down on the balls of my feet—so many options are there, at the ready, because standing is a much more mobile position than sitting.
This experience highlights one of the concepts that Katy Bowman talks about in her book Move Your DNA: it’s not that standing is any better than sitting: it’s that any stationary position is worse than almost any movement.
Three Keys
Breath is life: breathing is the most important movement we have some control over.
Movement—mindless movement, movement that requires attention, concentration and effort, big or small, gentle or vigorous—helps the mind to see things more clearly. Mostly by taking our minds off of whatever our minds are doing and letting our body mind us.
Writing refines thinking.
Breathe, move, write, repeat.
Bicycling
My sister once prompted me after bingeing an entire season of “Stranger Things”: “Remember when you were a kid and it was fun to just ‘ride bikes’? You didn’t do it because you had to go anywhere, it was just fun to ride?”
I may eventually try biking to work (if going into work is ever a thing again), but I’ve never really been drawn to the idea. And I’m not a fan of bicycling for exercise. I don’t much like it, in fact. I’d much rather run, which is saying something because running is not something I enjoyed at all until I learned how to do it so that it didn’t suck so bad. Look: if you’re running and you get tired you can walk and claim that you’re just walking. If you’re biking and you get tired, you have to walk beside your bike and look completely hopeless and pathetic.
Not to labor the point, but a spin class is my personal hell. Seriously, what kind of sadistic madman could become so completely unhinged that it seemed like a good idea to put a dozen or two people in a room with these torture devices, led by a zealous maniac exhorting them to vigorously pump their legs (while their bodies remain at a fixed location in the room) until their abdomens commit the ultimate act of insurrection by voiding in one direction or the other? That having been said, a leisurely bike ride is still appealing. Or the occasional adventurous ride.
My wife and I have a curious tendency when we are on vacation to rent a bike and go for a ride. Partly it’s curious because we almost never ride when we’re at home: too busy. Partly it’s how we do it: it’s nearly always a more ambitious ride (planned or unplanned) than is appropriate for our fitness level, the remaining daylight or both. We have on occasions narrowly made it back to the rental facility in time, and also straight-up told the rental facility that we simply weren’t going to make it back before they closed and would they please tell us where and how they would like us to leave the bike and lock it up?
Yes: bike, singular. We like to rent a tandem bike, a “bicycle built for two”—a recumbent, if they have one—because the effort of going on a ride that exceeds our stamina is not sufficiently strenuous and because the streak of quirkiness that runs through us is rather deep. We need the extra challenge of communication and coordination as we struggle back to the rental facility after hours and possibly after dark.
A tandem bike is much more like a canoe than a bike: you’re in it together. (There are fewer risks of drowning, of course.) If you don’t believe me, try it. You will quickly learn that clear, concise communication is all-important. You will learn that there is one good way and lots of bad ways to come to a stop. You will learn that getting started is almost as difficult, and that the communication will suddenly become louder and clearer if you’re not both ready to perform either maneuver.
And you will learn that once you have established a couple of procedures and keywords to use to get started and stop (and turn: that one’s important, too) that things can run smoothly for miles. Stops to look at wildlife or get a drink from a fountain can become almost routine. You may eventually feel the exhilaration of being on an adventure and moving perfectly synchronously with your partner and the machine. And you can focus on pedaling harder so that you don’t have to pay a late fee.
The Technology Buffet
I don’t have a smart watch. I have a dumb, analog watch that I’m very fond of. It tells me the time with mechanical hands, like in the olden days. It’s attractive and simple and... soothing, in a way.
I know a smart watch would do more stuff for me. It would be more convenient or... something. I could probably watch NETFLIX or create a webpage on it. Yay.
And I know I probably don’t need a watch at all. My phone works perfectly well as a clock*, and I spend a lot of time with devices that already have clocks. I’m never really at a loss to know what time it is. But my watch is reassuring in its tangibility and immediacy.
We don’t have to eat the entire technological buffet. We can pick and choose and enjoy what works for us. And we’re not savages because we stalled… I mean deliberately skipped over Blu-ray discs and went right from DVD’s to streaming.
*On language: would it be weird if I had written, “My telephone works perfectly well as a clock”?
FutureAnimal
For as much as we might wish to, we cannot un-invent things. The popularity of a given product or technology may wane due to fashion or regulation; they may be “lost” or “forgotten” because something better takes their place, but inventions address a need, they solve a problem and so seem to persist. Vinyl records and vinyl jackets will probably always live on, for better or worse, even as they are eclipsed by bits streaming down from the Cloud and Gore-tex.
Which really isn’t the point. The point is we can’t go back to a time when we didn’t have recorded music or clothing made out of synthetic materials. We also can’t go back to a time when we didn’t have cars or microwaves or smartphones.
One of my main rants is that technology can unfortunately replace almost every form of effort that humans can engage in. Since there’s not really a biological force that notices this and says, “Whoa, pony! Let’s not use that labor-saving device!” we end up indiscriminately letting technology solve every problem we have; whether for survival, convenience or entertainment.
A Luddite might rail against technology and sabotage manufacturing (for all the reasons that we think Luddites did this but actually didn’t). A common-sense approach might be to emphasize the tenets of adequate physical exercise and moderation in consuming all things. A philosopher might illuminate and encourage greater discernment between things that truly enrich our lives and help us achieve a greater, fuller expression of our humanity and those things that merely amplify our fears and reassure our own ignorance, comfort and status.
But as I’ve hinted, the Luddites would fail. And moderation is for chumps (until we change the culture). And philosophy is stuffy and boring (even though it isn’t: people just don’t recognize when they’re doing it or watching it in action).
My perspective now is that since technological “progress” is inexorable, we might simply find ourselves these days in an uncanny valley: technology is good enough to give us nearly everything we want, but at the cost of our long-term animal needs like musculoskeletal health, good sleep habits and a liver and pancreas that are not waging open rebellion. It feels a little risky, but my bet is on better, more insightful design and more developed technology that allows us to be the human animals we are without needing to go backwards in time.
Just Hanging Out
We’ve got a pull-up bar at home. It’s nothing fancy—just one of those contraptions that cantilevers on the door frame so you can put it away when company comes over.
I usually only take the opportunity to use it on the weekends, but ever since I’ve been working from home, I find myself doing a few pull-ups here and there sometimes when I pass by. It’s a little activity that feels good when I’ve been sitting at my computer for a while. My wife likes to hang from it for a few seconds because it helps her to stretch out her shoulders and spine a bit.
If I ever go back to the office, I don’t think I’ll need one at my desk, but it might be nice to have some of these around the office. Maybe in doorways or maybe there’s a tasteful way of incorporating bars to hang from into some of the hallways or the break room. We don’t have any problem with people leaning on tables or sitting on chairs whenever they feel like they need to take a load off their feet. Hanging from a bar, even if your feet never leave the ground, would be a similar solution to the problem of relieving tension and pressure from your back and hips.
Different Kinds of Tired
Tired from being in Zoom meetings on my headphones
Tired from reading .pdf’s on my screen
Tired from sitting in my chair for too long trying to think
Tired from doing housework and yard work and cooking
One of these might help you sleep better; the others not so much.
Ritual
As I’ve mentioned before, I like my coffee ritual. A recent HBR interview with Mike Norton helps to explain part of why I like it so much, and why we might find ourselves engaged in rituals. Regarding what’s important about rituals, he says, “What seems to matter is that you name it as a ritual, and that you actually do the ritual and don’t just think about doing it.” (Emphasis mine)
This, for my particular interests, is the single most important sentence in the article for what it suggests: our physical movements, our deliberate, thoughtful movements are what help us grieve, help us heal, help us keep going. Mindfully enacting a ritual, no matter how contrived, is more powerful than simply thinking about it, or perhaps even watching it. There are, somehow, powerful forces at work within us during rituals—mental and emotional—beyond those needed to simply move our limbs.
On Sticks, Stones and Words
They’re all good tools, and well-suited to us.
Large sticks make excellent handles for pushing, pulling and leveraging. Small sticks can be used for poking and scraping.
Large stones are great for smashing and grinding. Small stones—especially when they’re small enough to be held in a three-jaw chuck grip (between your thumb, index and middle finger)—are excellent for precision drawing and carving.
Words don’t necessarily work better when they’re large or small. They can be precise or general no matter their length. They are fantastic for teaching, storytelling, singing, coordinating, asking for help and saying, “Thank you”.
What Language is Telling Us
Language was born by appropriating parts of our brains that we use for complex tool-making. Spoken language made it possible for us to teach more effectively. It allowed us to hunt and gather more efficiently. Language quickly grew and spread because children absorb it and use it so readily.
Language invented stories and songs to better preserve itself. Then it infiltrated our vision system, leveraging our tool-making and tool-using abilities, to be written down on cave walls and clay tablets. Language became semi-permanent; it endured far beyond any individual speaker or group. Once language was written, propagation became much easier and more people learned it. Now language is everywhere and it’s preserved. Language wants to be voluminous and immortal.
Human cultures may at times lose their language for another. Their languages might endure sudden, profound disruptions and slow, meandering erosions. But no culture loses language completely, any more than an ocean would suddenly lose all of its saltiness. Language, it would seem, is now endemic to humans. Language wants to permeate humanity.
Perhaps more than anything, language wants to grow and develop and change. Language is never the same from moment to moment. It wants to become elaborate and sophisticated, and will develop complexities that are nearly ineffable when left alone with an isolated group of devoted speakers. It will expand to fill the considerable human capacity for nuance and intricacy. But language also desperately wants to survive: it will shed every extravagance and decoration in order to be useful to strangers in far-off places. Language seeks to explore and find other species of itself; long-lost relatives. It seeks contact and change and combination. A language will readily bend and blend with the force of another.
Language has co-opted our technology to further develop, grow and move. It has positioned itself to be an intermediary between us and nearly all of our tools. It may eventually become our only tool.
Language might outgrow us, having used us as a stepping stone on the way to the next thing it wants: independence from us.
Let Me Start by Saying…
TL;DR: Evolution is weird and brains are weird, because language skills come from the same brainparts that our extraordinary movement skills come from and is the only reason we have language in the first place. And it’s completely normal to use your hands when you talk.
Sometimes there’s a story that runs in the media about what the first language was or what the first words were. I’m not an expert in that field, so I have to take the word (Ha!) of others, but I tend to side with the group that’s pessimistic about how much we could possibly prove about the first language.
Written language has only been around a very short while, linguistically speaking, so there’s no documentation that goes back far enough to be directly helpful. And yes, you can use certain methods to help formulate ideas about what an extinct language might have been like by analyzing its descendants and other related languages that are still in use. But if you try to work your way back through more than a couple generations of those, you’re really just speculating.
But the topic is too tempting–what did we first say to each other? What was so important that we invented an entirely new behavior that has yet to be observed in any other animal? What situations or activities would have been made so much better that evolution would favor them?
It’s easy to say that language is advantageous—look at us now!—once you get to the point of having a well-developed language. But it couldn’t have just sprung forth, fully formed out of a caveman’s mouth one day when they suddenly felt like they had something to say. There had to be a rather humble starting point, and it had to be chock full of advantages in order to be worth passing on to the next generation.
A couple of researchers have proposed an idea that I find pretty compelling: that it had to do with teaching. Specifically, teaching how to make tools and use tools.
Yes, other animals use tools. In fact, other animals can make tools—we’re not unique in that respect. And yes, other animals engage in both individual learning (figuring things out for themselves) and social learning (learning by watching other animals do things). But we are the only animals that set about deliberately and specifically teaching; instructing others how to do something new. That’s huge.
The researchers theorize that at this point in our evolution we had already been cooking food over fires, so there’s a couple of pretty key technologies that you’d want to pass on efficiently to the next generation. And then, of course, there are the methods and skills in making stone tools that would be a big advantage to the next generation if they could get up to speed faster. Their theory also fits neatly with our ability to communicate with sign language and why we often gesture as we’re speaking—our first words were probably uttered as we were demonstrating how to perform a task.
OK, fine, we started grunting while we showed others how to make a fire or cook a chicken and that became language and we all lived happily ever after? Not quite, but close. There’s a concept known as ‘exaptation’ which is when a feature that has evolved for one purpose gets pressed into service for another purpose 'cause it just works so damn well.
Apparently, the dinosaurs that developed feathers had them at first because they were good for insulation—it was only later that they became useful for flying. Similarly, our brain capacity for highly evolved motor skills (evidenced by making tools and building fires and cooking food) got hijacked for language, which made us more successful at making tools and using tools, etc. and the whole thing just kept ratcheting up because language is a skill multiplier. Evolution of our species favored highly developed motor skills and language skills because they’re the same damn thing.
So even if we don’t know what the first language was or what the first few words were, we might at least know what was being discussed. And if you’ll indulge me in a little speculation of my own, I would offer the following English “translations” of the first utterances:
“Here, watch”
“Careful”
“Slowly”
“I said slowly”
“Don’t cut yourself”
“Hey! Pay attention, I’m not doing this for my health!”
“No, it’s fine; you’re learning. I’ll get another one... Quit screwing around, this is important!”
“OK, you know what? Just... I’ll finish this one. Go and play with your brother.”