Tag: walk

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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Modern life has clogged my skull to the limit. Technology has delivered an avalanche of options to preoccupy me at any hour; the notion of idle time that can’t be filled with some form of digital distraction is foreign to me, almost unnerving.

If you’re reading this column on a phone, or any sort of computer, you’re seconds away from all kinds of diversions—social media, digital games, the state of your 401(k), the latest celebrity embarrassment or political mess…

For me, the problem comes when I need to think for myself. If you read this column, you know that any kind of complicated thinking is hard for me, and perhaps impossible. My brain’s interior is not a series of mathematical formulas dancing around balletically, like it does for beautiful-minded geniuses in the movies. My brain is more like a slop-sink faucet, slowly dripping. Or an arcade machine that only plays 70’s-era Pong…

As I get older, I realize I need to utterly unplug. My ideas will not come from my phone, a Facebook post or the latest tire fire on Twitter. For me, they come from digital distance, from oxygen and exercise and especially from time spent outdoors. There once was a time I could get ideas from staring at websites, but not anymore. I get them from looking at trees…

I fear we’re getting worse. Technology just gets better, as those airport bookstores get smaller. I’m wary of our artificial-intelligence future, and the notion that we will lean on bots to think for us, writing code, speeches and even poetry. It sounds like more off-loading of our brain space to technology. And to what end? To watch more episodes of “Love Is Blind?”

I don’t want to sound like I’ve figured it out. I’m not saying this brain of mine is on the cusp of a breakthrough. My brain will not save the world. It barely remembers why it went to the supermarket.

But to get anywhere real, it needs to be uncluttered. It needs to be empty. I mean empty more than the usual. It needs to be bored. And for me that means: unplugged.

—  Jason Gay, from “The Joy of a Totally Empty Brain. Modern distractions cannot compete with the inspiration of old fashioned boredom (wsj.com, April 21, 2023)

Walking. In cool water from Lake of Memory.

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1040 (not your tax return), 1040 consecutive (almost) days on this Cove Island morning walk. Like in a row. 

But for the wind and the light rain, it would be a pleasant, 35° F morning in March. Ah yes, but for the wind and the light rain…it feels like 26° F, and the hood is up to protect this morning’s erratic ruminations. Diane Ackerman: “the brain’s genius is its gift for reflection. What an odd, ruminating, noisy, self-interrupting conversation we conduct with ourselves from birth to…,” no, i can’t say the word, let’s just say whatever comes after the End.

My weather app flashes an alert for a Coastal Flood Warning. With heavy rains overnight, the park, and its paths, are splotched with puddles. My boots are caked with mud from yesterday’s adventures, and rather than step around the puddles, I step through the center of them hoping the water line falls short of my boot tops. There is something ever so soothing about the clop clop clop — and racing barefoot through puddles during rainy summer days in August as an adolescent. The body light, floats like a feather, B.A., Before Adulthood, and the accumulation of the Heavy. My body veers towards one puddle and then the next, clop, clop, clop.  “Give me quickly / the cool water flowing from the Lake of Memory” inscribed on a fourth-century-B.C. Greek tablet.

I walk. Continue reading “Walking. In cool water from Lake of Memory.” →

Walking. On Sunday Morning.

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There she is. 7:30 am, December 28, 2022. She’s the middle aged runner that I mentioned in prior posts, a runner who runs every day, every day at least since I’ve been out on these morning walks, and again this morning, 1026 consecutive (almost) mornings, like in a row.

It was a mild December morning, 32° F, but, oh, that sunrise, and oh the photos on that glorious day.  I happened to be in the right spot at the right time to get a shot of her coming and going.

I want to use a ‘Lori word’ to describe her, diminutive. I had to look it up. But anyone who runs with the persistence that she does, is anything but diminutive.  Driving rain, biting cold, humid August mornings, she’s running. Continue reading “Walking. On Sunday Morning.” →

Walking. On Sunday Morning.

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It’s not the red car, but the black sedan behind it. Shot was taken this morning from across the cove, from a distance. At the start and end of my morning walks, I pull in here to take my first and last shots, but not today. Heavy cloud cover, and…

1013 consecutive (almost) days on this Cove Island morning walk. Like in a row.  It’s brisk out, 28° F, feels like 23° F.

For the last 6 (?) months, mostly every morning, the black sedan is parked here, overnight. Car running, exhaust drifts upward, condensation drips and pools on the asphalt. 

Who are you? What’s your story? Sleep here by choice (not really ‘choice’ with rents at nose bleed levels)? Bad decisions? Bad luck? Working 2 jobs, banking cash for better days ahead? Continue reading “Walking. On Sunday Morning.” →

Morning Walk

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“notice the dog’s tail wagging, the sound of the dog’s feet clicking on the pavement, the clouds of breath coming out of your dog’s mouth on a cold day”

— Joy Rains, from “The stress secret: 12 ways to meditate – without actually meditating” (The Guardian, Feb 9, 2023)

Video of Wally Walking. VOLUME UP! Thank you Susan.