Movement and Stillness

We saw a doe and a fawn slowly emerging from the cornfield the other night on our bike ride: watchful and beautiful; tentative and somehow poised at the same time. They stopped to look at us and we stopped to look at them. After a few moments and a little encouragement from us, the two deer bounded up toward the road. A car came from around the corner, and the two deer ran back toward the bike path and cornfield (A tricky thing: what is a road to a deer? What is a car?), then turned again and crossed the road, away from us and safely into the thick understory of a grove of trees.

Running and standing still are the two tools at their disposal to deal with the problem of how to respond to something they don’t recognize or understand. A small set of sharp tools, carefully honed, they complement each other nicely. Stillness lets them accurately observe movements of other animals (bicyclists, and motorists in this case). Quick acceleration and remarkable speed and agility leave potential predators behind.

Hummingbirds are magnificent examples of this in the extreme: they can suspend themselves perfectly in place, then fly across the yard like a dark green, feathery bullet. They occasionally stop to consider us as we work in the yard or stand looking about. They are curious, not really knowing what to make of us. 

I am curious, too; marveling at them. The tips of their wings moving impossibly fast; the tip of their beaks impossibly still. Both of us quiet for a few moments until something sets us in motion again. For the hummingbird: the business of drinking nectar, perhaps. For me: the departure of the hummingbird.

Movement, stillness, movement. Repeat.

What Counts

I remember carefully knocking small, colorful, plastic bears off of a 2x4 or a cigar box or a case of empties in my 1st grade (or was it 2nd grade?) classroom. We were learning addition and subtraction. I would line them up in a row and knock them down, one by one, to arrive at the answer for some complicated mathematical operation like 7 minus 3. I don’t remember counting on my fingers to accomplish the same calculation, but I suppose I did. It just wasn’t as memorable as defenestrating bears.

Using your fingers to do arithmetic is frequently considered bad form. It’s seen as unrefined—almost rude. I imagine that the practice of counting on one’s fingers probably offended the sensibilities of some self-assured school administrator at some point and then caught on as a new pedagogical war to be fought. (“Surely we can’t have children using their hands! That’s for babies! It’s undisciplined or… cheating! They can’t expect to be able to use their hands to do things in real life!”)

As it turns out, kids using their fingers has been linked with better mathematical abilities. Another bit of evidence for embodied and enacted cognition; there is a benefit to literally getting a “feel” for math.

While I suspect that disparaging finger-counting has to do with a feeling that the body is vulgar, there might simply be a general cultural bias against the literal. One insult often leveled at someone who doesn’t understand a verbal explanation is, “Do I have to draw you a picture?!” That might be good, yes; please do. Luckily, this perspective doesn’t seem to extend to math. Using a pencil and paper for ciphering or sketching out mathematical concepts can be vital, since they can quickly become complex. Past a certain point, there’s no easy way of getting around using a symbolic notation to manage it.

But there is some poetry, too, in that we use our digits (fingers) to type digits (numbers) into computers (bright rectangles that steal time from us). And here’s a fun fact: you can count up to 1,023 on your fingers by using them the way a computer would. Each finger represents one bit: on or off, up or down. With both hands in front of you and a slight change of perspective to a base-2 number system, you can count far, far higher than 10. Demonstrate this the next time you’re at a party and see how long it takes for you to be asked to leave.

We count with our fingers, with an abacus (or preferably plastic bears), with tally marks, with numbers, with computers and sometimes quietly in our heads. 

And we still hold up the fingers of our hand to let the hostess know we’re a party of 2.

Surface

During normal operation, our kayak is situated at the interface of wind and water and subject to the influence of both. The water and the wind are not always in agreement. The waters and their waves have their own ideas about where things are going. The wind is an invisible but independent, insistent current at and above the water. 

Without sails, the wind is simply tolerated. Our hats are pulled down tight against our heads. We squint our eyes, as if the wind were a bright light.

The water can be navigated, of course, but not simply through brute force. Water has gravitas and power, but it can be bargained with. An arrangement must be negotiated: playing for a minimum of friction and a method for force production. The paddles provide leverage and the water provides purchase. The hull and the water seem to readily conspire to grant buoyancy, but awkwardly and grudgingly offer slipperiness.

It doesn’t require much effort to balance—only to sit upright—but more to command where the boat points. It can be like a compass needle searching for North, except North continues to move and drift. The flow of the river might be the boat’s True North at any given moment, but the wind, waves and wakes are like nails and magnets scattered around our two-person kayak-compass: jangling and pulsing, pushing and pulling the needle. (The ducks don’t seem to notice or mind any more than the sunlight reflected on the water does. Show-offs, they are perfectly at home in both the water and the wind.)

The interface—the meeting place of these two elements—is where we sit and paddle. That slightly convex surface is where we brace ourselves against the pedals inside the hull and move from our core. Our core is the only part of us strong enough to brace us against and heave us through the wind and the waves. Movement, intention, resolve, efficiency come from the center, from the core. A kind of understanding about the water, the wind and the kayak must also come from the core. Or maybe that’s just where it’s focused, where it naturally concentrates. Maybe wisdom and understanding work their way in, bit by bit, from the outside and gather there, where the currents sink deeper down, growing in strength and finally providing stability; a place where we can mark our current position at the interface of things.

Time and Tide

On Sunday morning (or afternoon), it is time to wind the clock. It may not actually be the time, but it is the day. Time to add more time to the time-measuring device. Time will continue unfettered, of course, but my ability to measure it, to make distinctions about it will diminish somewhat if I don’t wind it. It is a grandfather clock, and I often note the hour or half-hour when it chimes. Sunrise and sunset will prevent too much drift in my sense of time, but the pigeonholes that I use to organize the days might shrink, swell or slant a bit. Softer, more malleable days might arise: a few more moments during the breakfast hour; a few more minutes of night; a more compact afternoon or mid-morning. Maybe time would stretch and compress throughout the day with my changing heart rate, since heartbeats might remind me of clocks: a regular tempo, marked by staccato thumps.

Our clocks might be somewhat more generous and peaceful if they mimicked our breathing instead: a gentle swelling and receding. The term tidal volume refers to the amount of air we cycle through during a normal, resting breath. Our breath is an invisible tide: slow and smooth in comparison to our heartbeat. “Tidal” sounds natural and congruent with the world. The sound of waves on the shore or a loved ones breathing—is there a difference?

Besides, marking the precise point of emergence of a specific second isn’t necessary for most of us. Most of us need to know the time in a wider sense, zoomed out to minutes and hours; pulled back and viewed against the backdrop of other events. The rhythm of things is what’s important—we use time to achieve a kind of synchronization, to be in step with each other. We most often are striving for kairos (timing) more than chronos (time).

It is interesting to note that an instruction in meditation is very frequently given to observe your breath. The long and ancient line of practitioners cannot have arrived at this bias absent-mindedly—they’ve had plenty of time to consider it. So I wonder if one reason for it is that we can (and perhaps unwittingly do) subtly adjust our breathing directly, but not our heart. Other practices make use of this as well, teaching coordination of the breath with movements of the body in yoga, martial arts and sports. We shape the kairos of our breathing according to the demands of our exertions, even as the chronos of our heartbeat pounds away in our chests, unattended. And yet the insistent punctuation of the ticks and tocks of time bring to mind the heart more than the breath.

I don’t begrudge our grandfather clock for its lack of resemblance to the tides. (Besides, its pendulum creates gentle, comforting beats and its chime is warm and low.) It’s not likely that there is a good design for a clock that is modeled more literally after our lungs. And, after all, the swing of a pendulum obeys the same natural law of increase followed by decrease—just along a small, slender arc rather than through the expanding and contracting volume of two irregularly shaped balloons.

Berries

We picked black raspberries on a morning walk this weekend. The berries were wet and sweet and full of tiny seeds; the thorns along the canes are sharp, but not particularly aggressive. They are plentiful on the edges of the woods: enough sun, but not too much. The dark, ripe fruit released with a gentle pull and sometimes fell off with just a touch. The berries are considerate enough to grow at heights that I don’t often need to stoop or squat to reach them (though squatting is a good way to spot those I might have missed), but not quite considerate enough to grow right next to the mowed paths.

We worked our way around and through the understory, trying to avoid burrs and being careful not to step on the raspberry canes themselves or too many other plants. I found myself standing on one leg a few times, looking for an opening on the way to the next group of ripe berries, like an elegant and majestic crane slowly making it’s way through tall grasses. (Well, maybe more like an ungainly and awkward industrial crane just…standing there, wondering what to do.) In any case, it was a good reminder that simply standing on one foot is a nice movement, too: improvised tree poses among the trees.

Warm, humid and drizzling; it was the kind of warm summer rain that soaks you completely a little at a time without ever giving you a chill. Listening to the light rain and searching for ripe fruit, I noticed that I wasn’t noticing much else. I heard the occasional runner or dog-walker on the paths, but never really looked up. Other animals browsing in areas like this would be pausing frequently to glance around to see who else might be approaching. We’re a bit more focused and goal-oriented, I guess. But at the same time I can’t help but think that that kind of focus when one is out-of-doors is somehow inappropriate; arrogant, even. Or maybe it’s just a little rude to be so absorbed in my own activity that I don’t bother to look up into the canopy to appreciate the cardinal that’s singing.

Postmodern Movement at Work

I maintain that modern “work” is grotesque and unnatural, and it would be better for everybody if that changed. We don’t typically get enough movement or enough different kinds of movement for our bodies (and minds!) to stay healthy. But how to incorporate a greater quantity and quality of movement without adding a whole extra category of activity to our days?

Well, what if we largely eliminated the corporate cleaning services that we contract with and cleaned the damn building and offices ourselves?

This, of course, will never work.

Yup, objections abound: “I went to college so that I didn’t have to do grunt work!” “I have to clean up after my family at home! Why should I have to do it at work, too!?” “I’m a really important person at my company! I’m the Senior VP of Global Synergy Directives and Coordination, goddammit!”

This can’t possibly work.

And the optics are poor: “The company is just trying to save money by forcing us to do the cleaning, too!” And there are profoundly serious gender issues wrapped up in who cleans what for who. And underneath that are profoundly serious socioeconomic and cultural issues wrapped up in who cleans what for who. And few people genuinely like to clean up filthy messes or take out the trash or wash windows. So yeah, let’s piss off everyone in the company by making them feel like they’re being disrespected, mistreated, abused and taken advantage of.

This might not work.

But the human movements of bending, kneeling, reaching, lifting, carrying, sweeping, mopping, wiping and scrubbing are very different from sitting motionless and using a mouse or trackpad, or standing in the same place in front of a machine. And movement has its own genius—literally—because thought is embodied and enacted: we think better when we move. (We are actually in the process of thinking even when we think we’re only just moving.)

And paying attention to the building and the space that we work in can help us to make it better. We might feel better about personally taking care of our little cube or shared spaces. We might realize that the break room could use a new coat of paint or be more willing to say something about the broken chair. We might feel a little more invested, feel a little more ownership of the building we work in if we help to take care of it. Besides, 10-15 minutes a day from everybody would more than offset the cost of having a cleaning service (and all the attendant complaints and misunderstandings that seem to come along with them) and wouldn’t impact productivity at all. It would probably improve it.

This might work...?

Sit-Stand Desks

Sit-stand desks are a great innovation in office furniture, allowing the user to not only adjust it to precisely the right height, but to go between sitting height to standing height whenever they want.

But there are a lot of positions and postures between sitting and standing that could be achieved with a desk that has such a large range of adjustment: bending, slightly crouching, stooping, lunging and maybe even squatting.

Just because it’s called a sit-stand desk and just because the pictures of sit-stand desks being used only show people standing or sitting doesn’t mean those are the only two positions you can use.

P.S. If you’re thinking that you couldn’t possibly be comfortable in a slightly crouching posture for hours at a time at your desk, you’d be right.

P.P.S. Staying in one position—any position, but especially a “comfortable” one—for hours at a time is what we’re trying to avoid.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Seasonings

We pruned the trees in our yard last weekend. It was warm and sunny and eventually we shed our coats to stay cool as we worked, cutting limbs and branches overhead and then stooping to gather them up. It is a different thing to work overhead: to grasp and use a tool at the limits of your reach above head height. Even just to study the structures overhead, looking for problems to be solved by a pruner or a saw.

It was warm and sunny, but there was still over a foot of snow covering the entire yard. Walking back and forth between the backyard and the driveway was an effort all its own. At some point I realized I was actually thirsty, which can sneak up on you sometimes in cold weather.

We wrapped up late that afternoon and then went for a walk with a friend, making the most out of the pleasant weather. It was dark when we got back home. We had leftovers for dinner, but they tasted better than they did a couple of nights ago. They were perhaps even better than some freshly prepared meals I’ve had.

There are many ways to prepare food, but that’s only one part of a meal. How we come to the meal is just as important: the dinner and the one who dines both benefit from preparation. It wasn’t that I simply worked up an appetite and was hungrier than usual. I think that food simply tastes better somehow after being active outside most of the day. Perhaps our senses are sharpened or our blood flow is increased or we are simply more alive…

Activity, exertion and adventure are methods of slow-cooking our perceptiveness and appreciation. They are seasonings we add to ourselves that improve our ability to savor.

Look What We’re Doing

I don’t know how much of what we do on a day-to-day basis is understood by our cats, but I’m guessing it’s limited. I think they understand sleeping and eating. I think they understand cooking a little bit. They’ve certainly come to associate it with food and eating. They understand play: batting a toy around or chasing each other.

Animals understand movement and intent, especially as it relates to them. They know when they’re being stalked, for example, like when I’m trying to give one of our cats his medication. The only way I can successfully do it these days is when I pretend to walk past him to go into another room or act like I’m looking for my phone.

So it probably shouldn’t surprise me that they behave as if I am available for play or head scratches or incessant petting when I’m working at my computer. It certainly doesn’t look like I’m busy from the perspective of the descendants of an apex predator. It doesn’t look like napping or even self-grooming. I think even other primates would wonder what it is that has captured my attention so completely.

To be fair, we also wonder at times what, exactly, animals are doing. It’s not like we have everything figured out—and we have a lot of advantages in that department. But even if animals had language, how exactly would we begin to explain why we focus so intensely without hunting prey? Why we remain nearly motionless for hours on end without sleeping? Why the things we appear to have caught and are playing with are so inert and lifeless (unlike a mouse or a bird), and why the game seems so dull?

Touch, Tap

I touch eggs to the edge of the sink before I crack them. Just a brief, light touch to get the feel for where the egg and the sink will meet before I tap with just the right amount of force to get me one step closer to breakfast: touch, then tap. I sometimes do the same thing when I’m using an axe (to chop wood, not eggs): a slow swing with a gentle stop at the target, then a full swing. Less often these days, I might make a quick little squiggle in the air with a pen just above the surface of a paper document before I actually sign.

I don’t know exactly how I started doing any of these things, but I assume that I picked them up from watching someone else. They’re not the sort of thing you’d learn in school.

These movements before the real movements are not quite practice or dry runs, even though they improve our performance. They are not quite simulations, even though they give us information about the movement, the endpoint and the workspace. They are quick calibrations of the system formed by our hand, eye and tool (or egg).

The movements we calibrate tend to be percussive or explosive and directed outward; not pulling movements that bring the action closer to us. Pulling the starter rope on a snowthrower doesn’t need a practice movement.

And we don’t do a dry run of pulling on our socks. We do it with movements that count. Movements that we might do only once, or a few times but want to do efficiently; otherwise why waste the time? Touching the egg to the sink saves me the cleanup of an egg that was smashed instead of just cracked. The slow-motion, targeted swing of the axe saves me the embarrassment of missing the tree. (The squiggle-in-the-air with a pen is actually a combination of a warm-up and trying to determine exactly how energetic I can be, given the microscopic space I have to put my untamable signature in.)

Touch—when you want to be sure—then tap.

It’s feedback.

It’s “feel that”.