This morning's walk was brief and aggressively paced, too. I want to puff my chest and point out the low 14's as my pace per minute, but the average was 15.14. My heart rate hit 121. And it was so dark at 7 am! That'll change next week with the arcane adherence to adjusting the hours of the day to accommodate our idiotic construct of "time" and daylight coordination. If Benjamin Franklin saw the chaos his 250-year-old idea was causing and the insanity of clinging to anything designed for 13 colonies living without all of the advancements made otherwise, he could not stop throwing up.* I reached Leigh before 7.30 and picked up Tommy's car. It's a win-win for both of us. He can drop it at night and have it magically back in the driveway the following day while I have a timeline and target, allowing me the movement and sun exposure I seek. The sunrise was terrific: bright orange hues, scattered thin clouds and panoramic. I momentarily regretted not having taken my phone on the walk so I could take a photo. Yet, my ability to observe and enjoy it was exponentially greater. I've taken and deleted enough 'nature' pictures as it is, and seriously, how many photos of the same sunrise were being taken simultaneously within 5 minutes in a 5-mile radius? Eventually, I can imagine a point where I could query any date, time and coordinates and get back a catalog of all the photos taken there and then. Just imagine the terabytes of data that would reduce and how you might take in a sunset at the tunnel vista overlooking Yosemite Valley, a herd of Bison traversing a snow-covered field in Yellowstone, or a concert performance you're half-listening to as you strive to get the suitable framing and focus on your phone. I've come back to this topic often: the challenging balancing act of living presently when technology has rewired our thinking process and compulsions. When I took that walk recently from my childhood home toward high school, it was with an entirely different outlook. As I sit here now, the rising sun lighting the trees like a painting capturing the initial onset of fall and the changing of the seasons, I wish I'd paid as much attention to it for the 60-some years prior. And how subjective "beauty" is. The forest was always "beautiful" to me, while the desert was bleak and barren. I could not understand how my sister-in-law Kathy considered the terrain of Tuscon so outstanding. I've come to see it differently, recognizing that all of nature, even destructive hurricanes and devastating fires, can be seen as beauty when you remove the ego and attachment to conditions and circumstances innately subject to forces well beyond our control. I'd be heartbroken to lose my home or a loved one to any of these infinite possibilities, yet they exist, and within them lies intense natural beauty. In another way, we may lament the loss of something we never genuinely possess when we see anything as permanent. Relationships, possessions, environment, it's all transitional. Living fully aware of this requires vigilance. I appreciate the bird that just flew to and briefly perched on a nearby string of lights so much more now, having recently watched a similar bird struggle and die on the ground before me. My mom's calls for tech support still trigger a baseline of frustration, yet I have far greater empathy and recognition of how they'll be fond memories if I'm fortunate enough to live that long. All these insights are aspirations being reinforced through repetition. Yet I'll derail this very train of thought when the next squirrel runs across the fence. ¯\_(γ)_/¯.
