Checking In

Nothing seems to help confirm that you’re tired better than sitting still for a few minutes. A glass of water and 10-20 minutes can disprove the feelings of hunger. And 3 pages of writing without any regard for coherence or convention can help unearth latent ideas.

Sometimes checking in on things works best when you’re not trying to do it directly.

Cinematic Journey

I’ve been missing films lately. We’ve watched plenty of them over the course of the last year or so, but I’ve been missing seeing them in theaters. Oddly, I’ve been missing the drive to the theater, walking in the entrance, and the walk to the seats. The anticipation builds as all the cues are registered by my senses: the smell of movie theater popcorn, the vast expanses of carpeted areas, the increasing darkness as you move closer to the theater.

This nostalgia is triggered in part by the fact that this week is the beginning of a long-running, local, annual film festival, and this year (like last year) it will be virtual. There will not be inconveniences of weather or travel or trying to get something to eat quick between films. There will not be any standing in line, filing into the theater or running between theaters to catch the next film during a day packed with films because, of course, when everything is streaming, there is no real schedule. Beyond the week-long window for watching the films, the festival is—similar to how much of the rest of our lives feel—at once strangely convenient and out of time.

And I guess I just miss traveling to and arriving at the destination where I get to go on another journey.

Layers

Among the many fascinating and clever things Samin Nosrat writes about in her amazing book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is the idea of using those four elements at different times during the preparation of a single dish. She uses the term “layering” to describe the approach of building complex and satisfying flavors this way: layering salt by using it not only to brine, but also to season and finish. Layering acids by using one to marinade and a different one later to drizzle. These layers add depth and dimension to food.

Physical layers create interest and satisfaction as well. Croissants and baklava are famous for their delicate layers. Pizza can be thought of as a large, round, layered dish. And sandwiches aren’t just convenient to make: by stacking ingredients on top of each other they provide contrast in texture and mouthfeel. A sandwich presents with a certain amount of order that we can investigate not only with our eyes but with our mouths: we know a sandwich by the biting and chewing of it.

But the finest example of layering, both in terms of preparation and assembly is the taco. The preparation of the meat involves seasoning with acid from a few tomatoes, salt and of course the heat of the pan sizzling the fat. A bit more fat in the form of cheese or avocado toppings, and likewise a bit more acid in the pico de gallo. Maybe a little more salt in the Tajin sprinkled on top or on a hard taco shell. The physical layers of ingredients, themselves layered with flavors, create one of the most fun and satisfying meals of the week: taco night—or as we like to call it, taco fiesta.

Foraging

Grocery shopping, as mundane as it is, is one of the last vestiges of foraging behaviors we still engage in. (Garage sales might be a similar activity, but with fewer fruits and vegetables.) It gives us a regular opportunity to consider what to eat, select it and then bring it home. We are extremely well-adapted to these activities because it is the first job humans ever had: we’ve always foraged for food.

Ten thousand years ago we would have learned from our parents and extended family where to find and how to select good root vegetables by carefully examining the leaves and stems. It’s a little different now, of course. In addition to trying to figure out if a mango is too ripe or which bunch of cilantro is better, we might also read labels: searching for information about nutrition or additives; or if there’s a free prize inside; or if these tostadas are the right kind because the ones without any damn salt don’t taste nearly as good.

And while we don’t have to cover nearly as much terrain, we do have to walk up and down the aisles. If it’s a relatively small list, the baskets give us the chance to actually carry our selections around the store instead of pushing them about in carts. And we have to heave the bags into our trunks or schlep them with us onto the bus. Depending on where you live, you may have four flights of stairs to carry them up. Grocery shopping can be pretty physical, despite some modern advances.

In this case, the things “we’ve always done” aren’t just tradition—they’re more important than that. They represent successful evolutionary adaptations; critical to the survival of the species. They connect us with our bodies and our environment. They give us opportunities to become more like ourselves. Besides, who doesn’t love the thrill of finding a great deal on fresh pineapples?

Spring Force

Spring moves quickly. Saturday morning we stood in a friend’s yard talking about lawns and trees and plants, shivering just a bit in the breezy shade of tall pines. Later the temperature rose to 82F and Sunday it was 81F; a sudden heat wave after a cool April. It felt hot, even though wasn’t hot by our summer standards; you could feel the coming heat of summer from the sun like a memory.

We haven’t had much rain, either. The air has been dry and has slowed down the sprouting plants and parched the soil with stiff, steady breezes and gusting winds. You can feel the dryness in your eyes after spending a day like that outside. Sometimes even drinking water doesn’t quite quench your thirst; it merely postpones it a bit as the sun and the wind take back their share from breath and sweat.

Today it will rain and cool off a bit. I can already smell the rain, even though it hasn’t started yet. The trees and plants know it, too, because they have been waiting; they can sense the speed with which summer is approaching. It’s in the air.

Barefoot in the Park

I found not long after the pandemic began last year that since I was spending all my time at home I didn’t need to wear shoes or socks very much. To take out the garbage or get the mail, yes. To make the occasional grocery run or mow the lawn, of course. But spending so much time inside at home, I found that footwear just wasn’t that necessary.

It really isn’t any more complicated than simply not putting on socks and then continuing by not putting on shoes—more laziness than anything. (not as many socks in the laundry, either!) I’ve noticed the differences between walking or standing on the wood floors in most of the house and the tile in the bathroom, or the cement in the basement; not just the textures, but the temperature. The area rugs feel a bit softer and warmer and I notice that I avoid the pronounced thresholds between rooms or the angular metal floor grates—artifacts of our old house. And I can’t help but also notice that I move my feet more, even when I’m sitting still. I can flex them more easily and wiggle my toes and I don’t hesitate to pull my feet up into a cross-legged position when I’m at my desk because, why not? It’s not like I have shoes on.

This isn’t anything profound and, of course, the barefoot movement isn’t anything new—just new to me. But still, the outdoors is another threshold to cross. Exiting the built world without anything on your feet is very different, not only to the person who is barefoot but to everyone else, too.

We took an outdoor yoga class last weekend at a lovely riverside park during our first brief stay away from home since being vaccinated. The morning air was cool but the sunlight quickly warmed us. We hadn’t planned on finding a yoga class, and so I hadn’t brought a yoga mat with me. No matter: I thought I would simply lean into my barefoot experiment a bit more and participate on the naked ground. When we arrived, the grass was more sparse and the litter more abundant than I had imagined. But I was determined to simply power my way through it, wrappers and paper and… whatever the hell that stuff is be damned. The instructor offered to provide a mat for me and I politely declined. She offered again, sent her son to the car and simultaneously produced a blanket that I reluctantly accepted. Very soon after that her son presented me with a mat. It seemed rude not to use them. A year of being barefoot indoors (when it wasn’t cold—c’mon, warm socks and slippers during Winter!) hadn’t quite prepared me to refuse a kind gesture or resist the pull of social conventions. (yoga class = yoga mat) 

The class was great—one of the highlights of the weekend—and I doubt that it would have been any better if I hadn’t used the mat. After all, I could still feel the bumps and unevenness of the ground through the mat. I was still outside in the breeze and the sun and the birdsong. I wouldn’t be any more wise, compassionate or enlightened if I had made direct contact with the Earth for an hour, and my level of practice is shallow and infrequent enough that I probably wouldn’t have been any more grounded if I had been buried in the dirt up to my knees.

But maybe it would have been better to not use the mat, if only to feel how it is to work my feet into the Earth a little; if only to feel how good it is to wash them clean after actually getting them dirty.

Jobs to be Done

We all used to have the same job: hunt and gather. Walk around, see what you can find to eat and bring it back home. You might have to run, climb, squat down or throw something to accomplish this, but you’re definitely lifting, carrying and walking over all sorts of terrain.

Then we developed agriculture and pastoralism; favoring some plants and animals to the point that we purposely cultivated them for our use. We separated the stuff that we really liked from the rest of Nature to have a steady supply of it and to keep mice or wolves from eating it before we did. Even today, any farmer will tell you that there’s still a good amount of lifting, carrying and walking in the fields and pastures. (Pro tip: watch where you step) The terrain tends to be a bit easier, though.

Pretty soon we had butchers, bakers and candlestick makers as well as hunter/gatherers and farmers. And the butcher doesn’t need to walk quite as much because the farmers bring her the animals: the farmers need to get back home to feed the cattle and besides, the butcher has this great setup for storing meat. The baker doesn’t need to walk as far, either, because the farmers are definitely either delivering the grains or he’s picking them up curbside—no need for the baker to actually go out and harvest grain from the fields himself. I don’t know where candle wax comes from so I’ll stop there, but you get the point. The butcher spends a lot of time using a knife. The baker spends a lot of time using an oven and pans. (Oh, and there’s probably a miller to make the flour and a blacksmith to make the oven and pans.) The candlestick maker spends a lot of time making candles with the candlestick molds. All three of them spend very little time hunting and gathering. And curiously, a lot of the lifting, carrying and walking the do is indoors.

Now we all have different jobs, very few of us are farmers, much less professional hunter/gatherers, and nearly all of us do our lifting, carrying and walking indoors when we do it at all. Specialization in our jobs gives us the opportunity to buy bacon, doughnuts and candles—pretty cool when you consider that we might not have the time or the tools to make those things ourselves. But the opportunity cost of that specialization is that a lot of our lifting, carrying and walking is done by someone else or something else. Which means that we’re no longer really accustomed to doing something as basic as lifting and carrying a load over terrain.

Reheat

I’ve taken to smelling my plate of food when I take it out of the microwave. This isn’t merely to enjoy the aroma (although frequently that’s part of it), or to elicit smart-ass comments (although somehow they arise from this) but to sense how thoroughly and evenly the food has been heated.

I can’t smell heat (and neither can you), but our noses are sensitive to differences in air temperature. Just like you notice the difference when when you step outside into a chilly morning, you can sense the difference between warm, moist air rising from hot food and the cooler, drier air above cold food as you breathe in through your nose. Briefly nosing around the plate can give an indication of whether or not it needs a little more time in the microwave.

Walking and Talking Revisited

The standard for video conference technique is advancing quickly. I say technique and not technology, because teleprompters and high-quality cameras already existed, but weren’t in most people’s homes. The built-in camera and microphone that typically shipped with our pre-pandemic laptops were good enough for the occasional video chat but not for the multiple daily sessions that fill up some people’s work week. Picture quality, eye contact, audio quality and lighting are all important considerations for a lot more of us now in order to have productive discussions that don’t make us feel like either drinking or going back to bed by 11am. As a result, I suspect that more advanced video conference features and accessories will become much more widely available as time goes on.

With all of this attention on how we look to and at each other over video, it’s curious to consider how we talk to each other when we’re together physically (distanced appropriately, of course); even when we’re seated at the same conference table. I don’t think I’ve ever been at a meeting and felt like the other person just couldn’t or wouldn’t break eye contact for at least a few seconds to look for something in a document or take a couple notes. I mean, there’s usually a whole room to look around at, so it’s not like we have to lock eyes for an hour straight: it’s a conversation, not a staring contest. We just need to be able to naturally look each other in the eye some of the time.

Which brings me back to walking and talking. If you’re walking with someone at a normal pace and holding a conversation, you’re not spending the entire time looking deeply into each other’s eyes. (If you do, I guarantee you will step in some kind of poop. It’s that simple.) Instead, as you walk you’re looking at the bike path/sidewalk/road, watching the traffic, looking at the birds and occasionally glancing at the other person. But there are two very interesting things about this situation: 1) you can look at the other person at almost any time—even if they aren’t looking at you, and 2) that feels completely normal. It feels normal because despite the fact that you’re not peering into the other person’s soul-windows, you are having a shared physical experience. You don’t have to be perfectly in step—it’s not marching band practice—but you’re going roughly the same direction and are presumably close enough to each other to be aware of the same important things: moving bicycles and cars, other pedestrians, ladders, piano movers, wet concrete and dog poop.

Consider another scenario: having a phone conversation with someone while you’re walking or driving(!). You can’t see the other person at all and they can’t see you. Not only that, but they can’t see where you are or anything around you. Your partner in conversation is oblivious to what you’re experiencing, and the pace, tone and timing of their speech reflects that. At times it can feel like the other person’s speech is dubbed into the wrong movie. It’s not that they’re inconsiderate or self-centered; it’s that they’re completely blind to your current situation. They don’t sense the moments when you simply should not or cannot pay attention to them—moments that most people would recognize if they were present.

It’s another uncanny valley that we find ourselves in: if we’re going to sit still and talk, then it seems like we either need to do it over the phone or we need the ability to look each other straight in the eye without any weird web cam offset. If we’re going to move through our environment while we talk, it helps enormously to be in the same space. The look of our eyes—both where they are looking and how they look to the other person—as well as a shared sense of movement in the environment help us to exchange our thoughts and words.

Meals, Stories and Recipes

A meal can tell a story. A meal has a beginning, a middle and an end. An appetizer: something to capture the interest and develop the appetite. The main course: to satisfy that hunger, to explore the setting and characters further. Dessert: to cleanse the palate, to resolve the tension introduced earlier. A play in three acts. And sometimes it’s just one big act: a single setting with everything rising and falling in a continuous sequence of action all over the stage.

(Which doesn’t take into account the epilogue: the putting away of left-overs, the washing of dishes, the last cup of coffee or tea or whiskey or wine while we talk some more and dry the dishes with a tea towel.)

And there are stories about other times those dishes were made: the people it was shared with, the weather that night, the little (or big) things that went wrong or miraculously right, the last-minute trips to the store. There are stories behind recipes about where they came from and how they’ve been modified over the years. There are stories behind other dinners, like the time pizza dough shot across the kitchen because it got tossed up into the ceiling fan. Some of the best stories told over dinner are about other dinners.

A recipe is a story we are told—a story we tell ourselves—about how something is made and what the result should be. But if a meal can tell a story, then cooking is the writing of it and a recipe is merely the setting. The players provide the action and the dialog. The real story plays out in the hours before, during and after dinner.

Transit/Transition

Sometimes it feels good to just walk; to be in motion and not at any particular location. To be on my way to nowhere in particular. There is a certain feeling I sometimes had when traveling in the Before Times: the feeling of being free from… well, perhaps just being free in a certain sense. Being in transit is like a lens that eliminates most of the distracting clutter of responsibilities and focuses on mostly tangible, tempo-spatial concerns: what do I have to do next to get to Baltimore? The only thing to do is to continue moving toward the destination, some of which involves simply waiting, e.g. for the plane to arrive. A singleness of purpose—unhurried and unforced, if you’re lucky. But even for all the hassles and discomforts, there can be moments of refuge from most other demands. You’re simply en route. On the way. In transit.

Sometimes it feels good to just be still very early in the morning. The relative stillness is invigorating. Stretching out in bed confirms my hypothesis: I am comfortable and cozy. Extending my limbs and twisting my spine back and forth give the pleasant sensation of movement and relief from stiffness before settling back into stillness. I want to remain motionless in order to fully absorb the nothing that is happening around me. The noise from the occasional car, distant and transient, draws my attention to the fact that there is no other remarkable activity. It’s quiet—I can tell by the other quiet things I can hear now, before everything begins making noises. Before everything accelerates into the day.

The seasons are also in transition: it is Spring. Any particular day might be cool or warm (but trending warmer), windy or still, sunny or rainy. The birds are awake and singing earlier each day, encouraging the sun to rise earlier and coaxing the days to stretch out longer, too. (Robins in particular, we noted on a walk one evening, seem to be the most productive North American songbird with their extended business hours. They are up very early, carefully eyeing the ground and hunting worms, and they are still flying and singing even as we return home at dusk from an evening walk. I wonder if maybe they take a long lunch each day.)

Spring’s inevitable destination is Summer. It will arrive after displaying a mix of days that preview heat or hint at snow. The plants and trees are steady and reliable indicators of the journey, pointing their shoots and leaves up toward the sun, or at least out toward the world, after being turned inward during Winter. There is subtle, internal, quiet work that takes place in transition, even in simply “waiting” to arrive. It doesn’t require doing so much as it rewards listening.

Trees and Forests

I’ve enjoyed trees much more than I’ve understood them. I recently finished reading Pete Wohlleben’s book The Hidden Life of Trees and learned many new things, not the least of which is that it’s faintly ridiculous to plant a tree all by itself, or even deliberately spaced at regular intervals. Trees are not solitary, most of them; they thrive together, not separately. Most of their interactions are both subtle and subterranean, but very real.

Trees form forests not by accident but because 200-400 million years of evolution has created a robust approach for doing so. Trees grow and form a forest and then the forest cultivates and nurtures the growth of new, healthy trees. It’s a system, a society—like herd animals, but with very little mobility and a much longer lifespan.

Which brings us to a difficult fact about trees and forests: they are, examined as a whole and left undisturbed, more like geographic features to us than plants or animals. One possible approach to forestry is to simply leave a desired area alone and let nature take its course—for about 500 years. Obviously, this sort of enterprise is mostly intolerable to humans because we’re so short-sighted, short-lived and short-tempered in comparison. I mean, we’re not talking about a parrot that lives to 80, or a turtle (tortoise, whatever) that lives to 150. We’re simply not used to anything that happens on that timescale and we’re getting worse at it every year. We’re more comfortable with the fact that our pets don’t live as long as we do, and we can consider their entire lifespan in the context of certain periods of our lives. Trees can easily do that to us, without exaggeration or arrogance.

It is one thing to look up at the stars and consider how far their light has traveled and for how long, and to feel small and insignificant as a consequence. But the stars have always felt impossibly distant—trees we can touch. We can regard trees up close and watch them grow from year to year, but we can’t really inhabit their world any more than we can live underwater. We are like small children who must be sent to bed long before the adults finally turn out the lights and lie down to sleep.

It is humbling to think of species who take such time to grow and live; who endure for so many seasons. It is overwhelming to consider how we might even begin to make preparations for the rebirth of a forest. But the depth of those feelings are matched by the contentment and peace to be found among old trees.

The Economics of Convenience

From classical economics:

The return on land is rent.

The return on labor is wages.

The return on capital is interest.

The return on management is profit.

When I took economics in college, there was some debate about what the return on technology really was. (I’ll throw in my two cents by suggesting that it’s markets.) But it’s a different consideration in personal economics. If we’re already well-off, the return on technologies that make things “quick and easy” is probably just additional leisure time.

But what’s the return on “slow and difficult”?

A Useful Routine

I’ve mentioned before that we have a pull-up bar. I don’t train with it to be able to do dozens of reps, but I do a few here and there throughout the week. It’s nice to know I could probably pull myself up out of the water if I fall off of a pier, or that I could pull myself over a tall fence if I’m being chased by a dog. Y’know, useful abilities to have if you find yourself in an 80’s or 90’s comedy film.

But another benefit I’ve found of being able to do a handful of pull-ups is that they can act as a diagnostic. There have been days when all of a sudden it seems like I can’t comfortably do as many as usual; sometimes the energy just isn’t there. I’ve come to take this as an early warning sign that, even if I feel fine in every other way, I might not be sleeping enough or that I’m on the verge of getting a cold.

I think because pull-ups demand a bit more intensity of effort than, for example, going for a walk or even a run it’s a little easier to notice when things aren’t quite right. The body can’t help but provide strong feedback when presented with a strong input.

Out to Eat

I think you could do worse than to learn a foreign language by spending nearly all of your time on food, drink and cooking. After all, you’ll need to eat if you visit a foreign country, and you may as well figure out how to ask for things you like or want to try. There are plenty of opportunities, too: you’ll get 2-3 chances a day to practice in that context; not counting afternoon coffee and tea, of course.

If you can ask for directions to good places to eat, make reservations and pay for a meal, you’ve actually covered a lot of ground, linguistically speaking. And if you can talk a little bit about or at least understand the preparations of various foods—kitchen tools and techniques—you’ll have even more verbs and prepositional phrases at your disposal.

Stories and food go together like peanut butter & jelly; everybody has fun and meaningful stories about food. You can learn how to tell one or two of yours in your target language, so that you have something you’ve rehearsed that you can use in conversation. People that you meet will have their own fun stories about food—you can listen to them and laugh over dinner and drinks. You can also just chat with your server or bartender and pick up new bits and pieces of the language, as well as recommendations for the next place to eat.

There’s a case to be made that human language only developed because we were able to grow big enough brains—brains which were a result of increased nutrition from learning how to cook food. If the very first language was developed as a result of food and cooking, then it only seems right to learn new languages with them.

Hardly Working

Today is garbage day. I brought the garbage and recycling outside so that the Garbage Robot can pick them up and dump them into its mouth. It’s a cheap thrill to watch the Garbage Robot at work, but I hate to miss it. The anticipation builds when I hear the brakes squeaking at stops on the route ahead of ours. It arrives suddenly at the end of the driveway and launches a giant two-pronged gripper from the side of the truck that grabs the container and heaves it up in an arc into the large bin mounted to the front of the truck. The contents slide and tumble out into the collection bin with some miraculous percentage of effectiveness. Windy days can diminish that effectiveness by blowing some items out of the container or the bin, but the Garbage Robot cheerfully continues either way, unceremoniously replacing the now-empty container back on the ground. The lid is usually left hanging open; the container usually upright.

We recently got a Vacuum Robot. (not a Roomba; another brand) I check on it periodically while it’s working, not only because it’s amusing (it can be), but because it’s a little clumsy and ignorant. It needs a little minding. Occasionally it needs to be freed from confined areas it’s gotten into but isn’t clever enough to escape from, and its bin needs to be emptied about halfway through. It can be a source of interruptions and puzzlement, especially when I hear unfamiliar sounds from the next room. It can be a little frustrating to watch sometimes when it struggles to navigate a room or negotiate an obstacle: the right maneuver in any given situation seems so obvious to me. But Vacuum Robot hasn’t developed that level of sophistication and common sense quite yet.

You could watch a spider build a web and never quite grasp why it does it quite the way it does, but you’ll never be in doubt that it is confidently pursuing a plan. You’ll never doubt that there is a pattern being created with techniques that are highly developed. I watched someone build a brick facade around a chimney once, and was left with a similar feeling: wonder at the way a structure can emerge from easy, rhythmic and almost inscrutable movements. There is satisfaction in watching someone (or something) skillfully perform a task. You can begin to feel the movements and pretend to understand how it might be to do it yourself—the beginnings of learning a new skill.

Vacuum Robot is more like a mosquito trying to penetrate a window screen than a spider building a web: it often looks like a simple pattern projected onto the floor using a pseudo-random application of a single, blunt tactic. But that discounts the victories it often wins over chair legs and tight corners, and the subtle way that it hugs the wall for maximum effectiveness. It has its share of triumphs away from the open plains and clear corridors. And to be fair, Garbage Robot owes all of its success to the fact that it is piloted and controlled by a human, though it’s difficult to see into the cab of the truck to confirm this.

In each case, we might tell ourselves a story about what the person/animal/robot is “doing” as we watch them. “Doing” feels a little fraught: it implies a goal and I feel a little self-conscious that I don’t have one. I’m just watching other things do their work.

Final Drafts

The first draft can be anything; sometimes it’s anything but what the final draft wants to be.

Thinking and revising and reading out loud and editing transform the first draft into something else—hopefully closer to what the final draft wants to be. The subtractive part of the editing process is hard to get used to: throwing away the parts that don’t make sense, that don’t fit, that don’t support.

But what’s left afterward isn’t just smoother, cleaner and tighter; it’s layered. There’s the core or the seed that was planted or discovered, the found and the fabricated bits that fit just so, and the gentle rearrangements over time that anneal them into something solid.

Final drafts contain previous drafts. Every final draft is a palimpsest.

Layers of Information

Written language has been an efficient way to take in information for hundreds of years. The act of writing is even more rich and involved than reading. The effort and mechanics of putting your thoughts on paper or screen help clarify what you’re thinking; they help you actually notice things about what you’ve written.

Writing is not a 2-dimensional phenomenon, even though it fits comfortably on the page. The instructions our brain sends to our hands create movements and forces that contain different information about the words we write than the text itself. Movement is information if we simply think of it that way. For writing and sketching this means that there is more going on than the visible strokes on the page: there is another layer of information, meaning and understanding that’s difficult to see because it’s in the movements that created them: the speed and forces and friction and resistance.

DNA is information encoded in proteins: instructions for making us much (but not all) of what we are. And movement—whether it’s walking, jumping rope or swimming—makes changes to our bodies: loosening up stiff joints, building muscle, increasing endurance. Our bodies experience these changes because of the information contained in gravity, load and leverage as we move.

There is deep work going on inside us when we move; layers of information in action. Encoded deep in the genetically determined structures of our muscles and bones and lymph nodes are the instructions for decoding the information contained in movements and forces and stresses. Our bodies read the reports of our movements at the same time that they author them: instructions for strength and health, encoded in motion.

Performance Art

Art is what happens when you make something better than it needs to be. It would have worked well enough before you put some finishing touches on it. It would have been good enough before you decided to put an extra flourish into it. A little extra effort and care can make it more attractive, elegant, robust, capable, efficient: the work of an artisan.

So why go for a run through difficult terrain, like snow and ice? Why split wood by hand; especially when it’s just for the occasional campfire in your backyard? Why even bother learning to deadlift, do a pull-up or tree pose?

Maybe just as an expression of physical potential and agency. Maybe just for the variety: a challenge that breaks up your routine. Maybe doing it outside just because it’s nice to be outside; whether or not the weather is actually nice. Maybe it’s just to have one difficulty in your life that you get to pick. 

Maybe doing things the hard way once in a while makes us a little better in some way: a little stronger, a little more coordinated, a little more aware, a little more alive. 

Maybe it’s performance art.

Wake Up Call

There is a span of time between waking up and getting up: often brief; rarely extended. It is the ordinary, natural conjugate to the time between lying down and falling asleep, but at the same time, it’s markedly different. There is no meaningful decision about when to actually fall asleep, but we get to choose when to sit up and touch our feet to the floor again.

Standing up is the first thing we do when we get up in the morning, after that strange span of time has passed. Strange because it can hold so many things: thoughts of the day ahead and the night before; a daydream on the heels of a night’s dream; the first email of the day; or nothing. Ideally, on the weekends it yields a pocket of idleness. There are so few pockets of idleness left—smartphones fit into them so well.

It feels like a few moments of mindfulness here would be worth cultivating. Noticing that the voice in our head hasn’t started its commentary yet. Feeling the sensations of the body: the full weight of it on the bed, flexing and stretching a little. (Perhaps aching a little…) Hearing the sounds around us. Seeing the ceiling: ceilings are somehow more interesting (puzzling, even) in the morning. All within this interval that trails along in the wake of the pull of consciousness—however strong or weak.

It might be a good time to jot down some thoughts or doodle while your guard is down. It might be a good time to pay close attention to your breath. It might be a good time to roll over and fall back asleep: a luxurious experience that cannot be bought. It might be a good time to simply savor the spare moments before we stand up and find our footing to meet the schedule, the list, the dog, the kids…