Flashing Palely in the Margins
Walk-and-talk
In the winter, the step counter on my wrist reminds me that I’m way too sedentary.
I spend most of the day, every work day, sitting in front of a computer, often in front of a camera where I’m lost in an endless slew of Teams meetings, only resurfacing to make a cup of coffee or tea, use the bathroom, and when I remember, to have lunch. I know I should be more active, doing more to get outside and to get my heart pumping, but when the temperatures are hovering at twenty degrees below zero, the motivation to leave the house dwindles.
Some work days, I’m lucky if I take 5,000 steps.
I know a step count isn’t an effective way to calculate health, but as a proxy for how much activity I get in my day, it tells me what I already know: I need to get out more.
Once the weather starts to turn warmer, as it is now, my energy levels go up, and my motivation to go outside rejuvenates. I work from our patio table in the backyard, and I go for strolls in the neighborhood on my breaks. My step counter looks less bleak.
The return of the warmer weather brings with it my favorite way to take a meeting at work: the walk-and-talk.
With a good pair of headphones, a sturdy pair of shoes, and an acceptance on all sides of the meeting that no video will be required, I log onto the audio version of a Teams meeting on my phone, head out the door, and take my call en plein air. It is delightful.
A few months ago, Mandy Brown said something that reminded me just how much I enjoyed the walk-and-talk:
Too much of our technology tries to get us to forget that we are bodies. I’m convinced that that forgetting does real damage to our spirits and intellects. We have to claw back spaces where we can be whole.
A walking meeting is not just a way for me to accumulate more steps in my pedometer. It’s also a way for me to experience the content of the meeting with new context, to literally ground myself and surround myself with life: to put myself in a space where my exterior place is just as important as my internal setting.
The walk-and-talk season has begun. If we can’t meet in person (and in-person walk-and-talks are great too!), then let’s try to schedule our virtual meeting at a moment where we can both amble and explore while we chat.
Time to brush off my walking shoes.
A poem
Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Do not care if you just arrive in your skeleton.
Would love to take a walk with you. Miss you.
Would love to make you shrimp saganaki.
Like you used to make me when you were alive.
Love to feed you. Sit over steaming
bowls of pilaf. Little roasted tomatoes
covered in pepper and nutmeg. Miss you.
Would love to walk to the post office with you.
Bring the ghost dog. We’ll walk past the waterfall
and you can tell me about the after.
Wish you. Wish you would come back for a while.
Don’t even need to bring your skin sack. I’ll know
you. I know you will know me even though. I’m
bigger now. Grayer. I’ll show you my garden.
I’d like to hop in the leaf pile you raked but if you
want to jump in? I’ll rake it for you. Miss you
standing looking out at the river with your rake
in your hand. Miss you in your puffy blue jacket.
They’re hip now. I can bring you a new one
if you’ll only
come by. Know I told you
it was okay to go. Know I told you
it was okay to leave me. Why’d you believe me?
You always believed me. Wish you would
come back so we could talk about truth.
Miss you. Wish you would walk through my
door. Stare out from the mirror. Come through
the pipes.
Some links
When I foolishly, as an adult, entertain my childhood dreams of being a writer, I dream I can write something this good: Why children’s books? by Katherine Rundell.
In it, Rundell uses gorgeous language to talk about writing for children, for instilling in them awe and wonder through the written word. Rundell’s prose is expressive and poignant and beautiful; it is how I wish I could write but know I couldn’t no matter how hard I tried. This passage has remained singing in my head since I read the piece in the London Review of Books:
Children have not yet built wide hinterlands: to them, the world is still opaque and full of necessary bewilderment. Those who write for children have the chance to point them towards beauty that they do not yet know exists: towards versions of joy that they have not yet imagined possible.
I will think about that passage every time I tell a story to my daughter for the rest of my life. (Another that will stay with me: “Fantasy is philosophy’s more gorgeously painted cousin.”)
Here’s another passage from the piece that I’m thinking about a lot:
I believe in the necessity of offering children versions of wonder. I don’t mean the twee commodified vision of wonder we’re sold — the Instagram post of a mountain lake with an inspirational quote. I mean real wonder: the willed astonishment that the world, in all its dangers and clumsiness, in all its beauties and miracles, demands of us.
I can go on and basically just copy and paste this entire piece here, but it’s best if you just go over to the London Review of Books and read the whole thing yourself. You won’t be disappointed; you will likely be inspired.
Back when I used to have a small collection of typewriters, two of my first acquisitions were by Olivetti (a Studio 42 and a Lettera 32) and I became smitten with their design. This short article on Olivetti’s design style is worth posting here mainly for the beautiful photos of Olivetti machines at the bottom of the article.
This piece by Troy Jollimore about catching students who use ChatGPT in their college essays is less about the perils of AGI in academia, and more about what we’re teaching students about writing, work, and the way we approach the world through the written word:
It turns out that if there is anything more implausible than the idea that they might need to write as part of their jobs, it is the idea that they might have to write, or want to write, in some part of their lives other than their jobs. Or, more generally, the idea that education might be valuable not because it gets you a bigger paycheque but because, in a fundamental way, it gives you access to a more rewarding life.
“Didn’t I play at being an adult until one day I woke up middle-aged?” A rumination on playing pretend, and safeguarding the dreams of children.
Fascinating interview in Anne Kadet’s newsletter with someone to whom you can pay a small fee to make decisions for you.
Ellen Cushing is explores our fascination with kosher salt in our cooking, and comes to the conclusion that maybe we should all just be using table salt a lot more—or at least not be beholden to the cult of kosher salt.
That person you’ve been meaning to text, to call, to email? Just go ahead and do it, now. It will only take a few minutes and you’ll have changed the course of your life and theirs. I was reminded of this after reading this gorgeously, poetic rumination by Paul Crenshaw: I’ve been meaning to call. Read it not just for the reminder to connect, but for the evocative writing, too:
I am not avoiding you. I think about you often. I do. I thought about you this morning on my way to work. The snow in the fields made me think of you, the frost on the trees. Maybe it was the way the sun came up, etching the world into shape. Maybe it was the contemplative quiet of early morning highways across America. Maybe it was the longing in the grayness of dawn, the belief something better is coming.
I’m going to go back on my soapbox and talk about how decimating the public service is bad for everyone, but especially demoralizing to people who devoted their lives to serving others. Anne Helen Petersen’s This is How We Fall Out of Love with the World captures this, and so much more about the dismantling of our systems and what it means to work and worth:
These cuts don’t just signal the end of public works as public good. They also signal the twilight of the passion job, better known as the jobs performed by millions of Americans, often at great personal expense and sacrifice, simply because they loved the work that they did.
Some parting thoughts from Catherine Lacey’s excellent 144-word newsletter:
Sometimes I wonder if all the technological options we have to escape our solitude—all the ways we can publish our thoughts or seemingly connect with friends or strangers—may have pushed us to the point of being unable to think or say anything unless we believe someone is listening.
Thank you for listening. Talk to you all in a couple of weeks.
PS: Here are some owls in towels. Enjoy.
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