Incidental Fauna of the Southern California Coastline, July 6th 2018

It's so nice to be here just talking to you.

The water off the coast is now (finally!) warm; very warm, very comfortable. You can swim for a long time, especially in a suit

this was the morning I'm writing about

I'm writing about some animal stuff that happened in/at it.

A little before 8 a.m., and there's a shorebird on the empty beach. Rather: there's a shorebird on the nearly-empty beach. An older man who's living rough on this patch, and whose wake-up my arrival frequently coincides with -- he stretches out of the sleeping-bag (I think) that's laid over himself, resting amidst a few bags of stuff and a mountain bike with thick tires. He's fine to me; I'm fine to him. We say good morning. No other people.

Not that many animals, either. At least not visible. But: this one bird. Pecking and scampering, doing its thing. And it's a really interesting bird: it's not a sandpiper; it's not a seagull. It's not an egret or heron. I watch it doing its thing; its thing is neat. It scampers back-forth with the waves, 'Piper-like. It clearly is hunting: it searches, it pecks. It has a long bill, it has long-ish legs. It's not a bird I've seen before.

It pecks, it hunts, and its hunting takes it gradually down the break towards where I am standing, watching it. After it gets pretty close--15 feet--it hunts for a couple of waves then takes flight; flies just twenty feet or so, to the far side of me, and continues its pecking and hunting progression.

I go for my swim (more on this below, hold on). After, later, I try to figure out what the bird was. The Internet is a weird place to figure things out; once you get there you see how winding your path was. But after a bunch of search-adjustsearch-blahBLAHblah, I settle: I'm pretty sure that it was this.

Frank Lehman / Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

I actually...I'm embarrassed to say I imagined at one point that the story of how I figured this out would be interesting. It is not. I won't tell it. But the bird was fantastic. If that's what it was. I think that's what it was: a Marbled Godwit. The name is apparently an attempt to represent their call, rather than some extraordinarily bizarre act of antiquated sacrilege. Anyway, my bird was silent. Focused!

Now, back/forward to the swim. I'm out, swimming; it's gorgeous, a pretty still day with no big scuffling or swells once I'm out past the break and the surface is glassy.

On the glassy surface, I see one of those disturbances--very small--that at once you're quite sure is some thing. I swim up; it is. It is one of these.

this image is public domain; it seems to be attributed to a Wikipedia user Hardyplants whose page does not appear to exist.

anyway.

It is flopped on its back, doomed (I think) on the water. I've kind of often wondered this: when I lived in a building with a pool, I probably saved two to five bees/wasps a day from that pool. It seems like a majorly maladaptive trait: to need water (as all living things do), but to...die? If you get to close and your wings get caught? I guess I'm saying it always surprises me that these charismatic Hymenoptera haven't kinda evolved out of this watery-doom thing. But:

The wasp is on its back, well out on the water. I lift it up from below and it's now on my finger. What's exciting about this is the super close-up view; wasps, you don't usually get to see really, right? They are zipping around, tiny threatening aerialists -- you don't get to study them up close, mostly. This one, obviously, wasn't zipping anywhere. At least not for the moment.

So then I'm faced with this question, which strikes me at once. How long am I willing to wait, for this wasp? I immediately see that the only good option is to hope it can sort itself out on my hand here--do what it needs to get going, and go. Because: (a) swimming all the way back to shore with my hand up and a waterlogged wasp sticking to it seems both kind of annoying and not very feasible; would take a long time, would suck, might not succeed (wasp washed off). (b) Just being like...f*ckit: sorry wasp-y. U die, also didn't feel right. I in general feel that way, about things like this. I'm way far from perfect, in terms of my local and broader impact on the earth and it's creatures. But whenever it's one of those choices, like: I could interrupt my swim or not; this wasp could live or die. I could get out of bed to rescue this fly or not; this fly could or die. I could run through this dumb bush, get a little cut up (or not), avoiding this lizard; this lizard could live or die. It always just seems so weak and small to choose the small comfort / ease thing for myself when the animal's stakes are existence or not. Which is how this choice felt.

But how long would I wait?

Did the wasp even have a chance? Was it too...saturated?

I watched it.

It surprised me by "preening" itself. Well: first I gently (careful of wings) kind of used the stick from one damp hand to set it right (i.e., not flat on its back with its wings plastered down) on the other, which I'd air-dried as well as I could. So but then: if I were a wasp in this spot, I think I'd be like: "sh*t: I am drying my wings." Not this wasp. No. It preened. This was a cool, cool thing to see close. Holding it up almost right to my face, I saw its tiny frontal legs making those "running forward over the carapace of the skull piece"-type motions; like it was doing its hair or cleaning its face off or something like that. I still can't explain it (and haven't revisited the research-weirdness that is trying to research these things on the web). Was it assuring the patency of its airways? That, I believe, would be really important. It had to be something important, I guess; that or I just got this very vain wasp. It did that for a while, though -- like most of our time. Preened, little front-arms rubbing over its face.

This whole time its wings were like...man. Just a mess. They were all wet and sideways and f#cked up and...that's the thing I (not I as a hypothetical was; I) was worried about. Cuz if its wings didn't work, then I did not know what.

Its antenna were awesome. So ar-tic-u-lat-ed.

So okay then it did its wings, and they took like thirty seconds. First, it messed up. It tried to extend them and flap them off--I could tell it was doing this; once I was watching it closely, over time, I was struck by how 'animal-like' it was. I tend to think of insects as strange alien things in this alien tinyworld; once I dropped down into it, this one just seemed like a creature--anyway the first time it tried to extend and like flap off its wings it screwed it up totally, tipped sideways and again plastered itself to my hand, which of course was not fully dry because we are a freaking 1/4-mile or whatever out bobbing on the ocean this whole time, wasp, wut r u doing here anyway?

So it's stuck to my hand again.

So I do the thing with my other hand, again; edge of my thumb, gently as I can, lifting its stuck wing from flush to my skin. It's at this point that it occurs it to me that yes, this is wasp; yes it is now oriented to sting. For some reason, this just occurs to me. I'm not worried about it. It is not like I'm super-tough about wasp stings or something. No way do I want that. It hurts like a lot. But I somehow feel sure that that's not how this goes down; also I have some vague trivia factoid back of my mind that maybe not all wasps even can sting (only the females? or something? I still have not checked this out because...meh. I will. Soon.).

So but then, after I thumbed its wet-plastered wing up from first failed attempt...then the whole rest of it took like ten seconds. It splayed them out: two pairs of wings, bigger-smaller. (I really saw this! Or: I thought that I saw it! This whole thing was my own tiny (wet) nature show).

And then it kind of whuzzzzzed them for not long, two seconds at most

and leapt off my hand and was gone.

That was it.

Compared to the dainty extent of its ministrations to its head / face / mandibles / ?, the whole wing thing--which I would have thought would be hard and mission-critical--took two seconds. Maybe, once it was out, it wasn't worried at all. I was a magic piece of wood or whatever (what does it care? I'm not eating it. Sure fine I am wood); it knew its wings would be fine; it wanted to sort itself out before flying.

I checked, really searched, all the water around me. In case it had dumped itself plop back in ocean. The water was glassy, and I could see several feet; I cautiously started swimming again, looking. Didn't see anything.

The whole episode took longer than three minutes and fewer than ten.

Lucky (sunglasses)

I've written in this space about compulsions, and the tensions of my own largely on-top-of-it relationships to my own. I've also written, in a general way, about what a lucky life I have. THIS IS A POST ABOUT BOTH.

A thing I'm compulsive about, after runs, is forgetting my sunglasses. Look, I know they're not fancy; I bet you have nicer ones (they cost $46.44 when I bought them in 2014, which is-- what? $Eight-grand, today? ). They're not fancy but I like them; I've used them on runs and on bikes for four years! They work great! And if I lost them I'd be sad -- I'd have to get something else, it would cost more, and I'd be sad.

This is dumb, right? I mean.

So anyway I'm concerned always, specifically, about leaving them on top of my car. You drive to the trailhead, you do your trail run (today: 9 miles here), and you come back and you're changing out of your sweaty clothes and you've got all this stuff and you're putting things on top of your car to dry while you change and...you might forget your sunglasses, right? Like some (most?) of my compulsions, this one isn't crazy and has an upside -- I am inclined to forget my sunglasses on top of my car, they blend into the blackness and--especially if I've not in fact worn them for much of the run--they're somehow sort of the last thing on my mind. But I've never done that, because I'm like, worried about it!

Till today.

Today I got home, and I did not have them. I looked for them in my room, after dumping my stuff. I looked for them in the area outside my room, where I kind of stage some dumped post-run stuff before sorting it out. I looked in the various bathrooms I'd used and had not. I walked to my car and I looked in it. I found the other pair of sunglasses I'd (why?) decided to wear for the drive home, but not these. It was looking bad.

I worked for awhile, telling myself it didn't matter (with success). I ate some food, walked back to check my car one last time. On the walk, I acquainted myself with the reality in which I had sustained the jagged loss of this pair of sunglasses; the positive angle of getting a newer pair that might even be better (I knew it would not, but I was being very brave). I gave my car one last--

Here is the drive, back from the trailhead to my house:

That's a 17-minute, eight-mile drive; for those who don't know: the "1" is a freeway that runs 'long the ocean, then that hook left (as you're driving, right as you stare at the image right now) is onto the "10", which is one of L.A.'s main arterial freeways. So: freeway driving, lane-switching, etc.

--look and smiled at once:

I'm already so lucky! It's totally dumb! Why should I get this luck-nugget as well? Tucked against bicycle rack, just so, such that...

hwelp: I'm not going to question it.

I put them on, walked my desk, and began typing this to tell you.

Hit It Running [1 of (presumably, we'll see) 2]

It's very cold here in Hong Kong, for Hong Kong, and apparently no one's prepared. On campus today, students took a final exam in full coats and hats. I am sitting in my cold little rental flat, a tiny space heater shaking its head back and forth at my side, because that is the only source of warmth available in the place. This is not because my host is a dingle; he's an excellent host. The city just is not prepared for the 40s, apparently.

I've already fallen asleep twice, radng ths. I'm just going to power through.

This is a post about a reasonably specific: an approach that, I have that I think may be of use as a data point to other people who derive a pleasure and satisfaction from pushing their bodies with physical exercise.

The point of this post is that, when you're traveling, you should ignore the voiehrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Start again.

The point of this post is that when you're traveling you should ignore the part of your voice that says "pull back, wait, give yourself a break" about your morning workout / evening workout / whatever. Here's what I mean:

It's worth refuting, this "take it slow, give yourself a break" mentality -- when you're traveling. It's worth refuting, therefore this blog post is worth writing, because it has smarts in it. This is in distinction to the general "nah" of laziness, mental or physical, that might keep you from doing the thing under everdyae

oh no, okay, wait! I just had a good dream. (I fell asleep for a couple of minutes, in front of this dumb little heater in my lovely little flat). I watched this movie, 77 Heartbreaks, on the flight over. Actually I watched ⅔ of it; jjjjjjjjjjjja

try again! 

Actually, I watched ⅔s of it, cuz the flight ended. But the microdream that I had one falling-asleep-at-the-keyboard ago involved a young couple clearly modeled on / looking like that young couple. And they're somehow....they are constrained by the fact that the borders of the phone screen is cutting off part of the picture on top (this hasn't yet happened in a way that's affected a good game I'm plyaing on my phone, but has happened) and so that's making it hard for decisions to get made

and the thing is he likes this one restaurant on one side of a little Hong Kong street
and she likes others, or one specific other
cuz they're opposites, see

and they can't agree!

and but then they meet in the middle of the street because neither of their respective companions showed up or ghy ol something and so there they are

this young couple

in the middle of a Hong Kong street; him in front of his restaurant

she in front of hers

and they see each other know the moment for what it is,
the Moment That They Met,

and then there's a funny postscript agout not fbeaofeah

ARGH

funny postscript about

"which restaurant will they go to"

as they tug in opposite directions; and:

cut.

That's not what this post is about.

Okay so maybe I should start this again.

When you travel, reader, friend,
and if you--like me--are someone who gains pleasure from physical exercise
Hit it Hard.

You will have a voice that says, "whoa, wait, chillout. Take it easy."
And instead of being weak or whatever this voice might usually be characterized as
this voice will be compelling, worth following, because it contains the truth.
You're treavling, that's tiring; you were flying for whatever like 20 hours.
You need to conserve your strength.
Plus, you have less time, so the general idea of "work smarter, not harder"
don't waste the time of a workout on a second-rate workout
one that you're tired, a bit, during
one that you don't know exactly where the running rout leasd, or hwate0awi

the point is the idea of "taking it easy" might not seem crazy!
It's not crazy!
But:
krush it.
Go. Do the thing.
Do it even if maybe you'll do it crappily, maybe you don't know the running routes yet
you're a bit tired you won't run good spltis
etc.

DO IT.

do. it.

Why?

(1) the nonspecific reason is that, barring injury or rhager yoaummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmms

okay starting again reason 1 is:

non-specifically, "go do the thing" is very good advice. It's not always correct, of coruse,.T BUt htia

okay forget it I'll finish this tomorrow morning promise I will and promise I won't change anything obie ti a

nope! I am back. It is ten minutes later; I washed my face and now I'm in this tiny flat's even tinier bedroom--room for a twin bed and nothing else, the door can't even open properly with this bed in here--and the heater on heating the small space so back to the smart point I'm trying to make.

Maybe, let's review.
I went on a run this morning despite the fact that I had all kinds of reasons not to;
unlike most of the time when you have "all kinds of reasons not to" these reasons were somewhat defensible, since they related smartl yt to444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444m

no i better give up i will finish thi stomorow

Killed a Lizard

The western fence lizard is familiar to anyone familiar with the low-lying mountains of southern California; these scuttering, dusky little lizards pop up all over the place, doing their funny lizard push-ups and scampering up walls and all of the lizard things.

i didn't kill this lizard. i saved this lizard; the little interloper got caught in my door in my place in Topanga; I found it once it had exhausted itself from trying to scrabble up/through the glass, but (I really do think) before it was dehydrated past hope or whatever. I was able to scoop it up (carefully!) just with my hand and a sheet of paper, and release it.

On runs--not them; me--they do something else. I've indulged in many jeremiads about this thing that they do, to friends and family, because it is frustrating and self-endangering;

what they do is, when scampering across the path, while you're running, behave in a way that seems to me to be totally totally maladaptive if you're interested in not being eaten by a predator:

I am running on a narrow single track -- the whole thing is say two-and-a-half feet wide, hemmed in by thick chaparral and brush either side. A lizard darts out and, incredibly, instead of continuing its direction of motion to dash into the protection of the thick brush, charts a straight course that is clearly along my trajectory, as if trying to outrun me as of course it cannot since it is a tiny lizard, causing me to pull up my pace and often do all kinds of side-stepping calisthenics to avoid it. I've never had to, like, toss myself off the side of a cliff to avoid one, but I've sure stumbled and scratched up my legs and just generally emerged from these encounters shaking my head at the tiny reptile brains of these things that veer off what seems like a promising course to safety in order to endanger themselves (what if I were a hawk?) and also make me have to do silly trail-dances to dodge them. But I'd never--or, at least, not knowingly--stepped on one until a few days ago.

I've reviewed this a bunch; there really was not anything I could have done. This was not, actually, a scenario like the one I've just described. I'd feel worse then, because (presumably) if I'd simply stopped running the lizard would have escaped. This was more sudden. I was going downhill in Temescal, running the return of a pleasant short loop of the kind I've been doing a good deal of lately. I saw a flash of dark from the brush; it was either after I'd pushed off my left and was coming down on my (I'm pretty sure) right foot, or--the earliest possible, as my memory has it--just as I pushed off my left to come down on my right. Running perpendicular across my path. And the dark flash slipped perfectly underneath my shoe, disappeared for a moment during which I felt nothing, and then I was past it and on down the trail.

And I stopped, of course; and here...it's not like this is so horrible, so if you're titillated by that sorry no dice, but it does get a bit unpleasant so perhaps you'll want to skip this paragraph. I'll put all the this-kind-of stuff in this paragraph. So I stopped, of course, and turned back up the trail; my idea was (a) to make sure, and (b) to see if, you know, there was a situation where I had to do a thing to finish a thing. And for a second I was happy, because I saw nothing, and then a saw a fluttering shadow and knew I'd been right. And I approached it, and it was already in the process of-- I don't know, it may not even have been conscious or neurologically active: it was flopping around like a broken machine, or a wind-up toy losing gearage with half its parts missing, jack-knifing in strange ways on its side, flopping spasms. It was a pretty big one, big as my hand nose to tail (for these lizards, at least the ones that I see, that is pretty big). And after some moments its flopping spasms subsided, replaced by twitches in its small, pronged lizard feet. I picked it up, pretty sure I would not need to do a thing to finish a thing; pretty sure it was finished. Its little feet still jerked and spasmed, but I was practically certain it wasn't in pain -- I had not popped its head or anything dramatic, but a thick foam of blood had soaked out from the whole right side of its jaw, and my guess is that I'd broken its neck or otherwise utterly shattered the machinery of its neurological/physical systems. It had a blue-brushed belly; a couple weeks earlier, talking to my parents about lizards on the trails, my mom had observed (from her internet research) that western fence lizards sometimes have blue bellies, and then said oh but maybe I haven't seen any like that, and I'd corrected her that no, they were dusky on top but I'd seen their blue bellies, I'd liked their blue bellies.

I held it in my hand -- after ten, fifteen seconds even foot twitches subsided. I laid it to the side of the trail, so its form would not be further mangled by footfalls. I hoped that something would come, eat it soon; I'm practically certain that hope was well-founded. I finished my run.

It's a small thing, compared to all the things. OF COURSE. But these inexorable things are, like, very inexorable; there's no positive gloss or yeah, but... I didn't beat myself up: I really don't think there's much I could have done. It just made me sad. And it felt/feels unfair, in the way of these things, and in a way that--perhaps--part of my sadness is about how these stories are always so broken and unfair. An existentially catastrophic thing happened to this animal; a thing that was--for I hope just a flash--horribly painful as well, no doubt. And I'm the one who gets to talk about it; I'm the one who gets to think about that lizard, on my next trail run, or right now, or whatever. I KNOW I AM TALKING ABOUT A F#*(ING LIZARD, THANKS; I GOT THAT. But it's a tyranny of narrative that applies to all of these things, and is why--leap here, lookout--our fixation on murderers and perpetrators of harm in the stories we tell is so odious to me. Because one of the grievous harms of physical and psychological harm, of victimization, is that it takes you out of the world in a way that ends your story. Ends or compromises your ability to tell it; ends or curtails the timeline of it. And it's not fair! To the extent that anyone did a bad thing in this setting, I did -- I went recreationally to a place that's not really mine, or that is I M H O more that lizard's than mine, and as a result of my going to that place and how I chose to behave there, even if I was not being a big crazy jerk, that animal died. I did the bad thing, but I get the story. That's bullshit. It's bullshit. That's not how it should be.

I'm glad I wrote this. I'm impressed with you, friendly reader, if you read it all through. But I wanted to write it as a final...to like...to not let myself, forget. Such a small, "stupid" thing; and isn't that crazy, too? Because it is small and stupid, compared to so many other things. I agree. BUT I BET IT DOES NOT SEEM THAT SMALL TO THAT LIZARD-- OH WAIT, NOTHING "SEEMS" ANY"THING" TO THAT LIZARD ANYMORE, BECAUSE I CRUSHED ITS BRAIN BENEATH MY SHOE BECAUSE I LIKE TRAILRUNNING.

Anyway: sorry, thanks. I will try to be nice to the world all around me, and all of the creatures and forms it contains. Thanks for reading.

"Supercut", a Lady, the blue Pacific Ocean

"Supercut" is track 9 on Lorde's fantastic album, Melodrama. It's that song right at the end of a great album (Melodrama has 11 songs [don't give me sh1t about that "reprise" meaning there are only 10; that reprise is like a totally different song from the song it's reprise-ing]) that's like "oh u thought I was done? WH-HWAM: not done. Ur welcome."

What you probably should do is just go listen to Melodrama, or at least "Supercut", then come back to this post.

The song (sorry if you just listened to it! now I'm describing it--anyway), "Supercut", is one of those spectacular songs that are probably my favorite kind of song: it is poppy and catchy but it is about sad things. It has some driving plonky-plonk stuff that builds; at one point Lorde's voice cracks in the most surprising burst of emotion I've heard in straight pop perhaps ever (the first time I heard the song I was cooking; I stopped when she did that, went and rolled the track back just to hear the bit again; I couldn't believe what I'd heard, how great it was). So it's like a feel good chill-roll jam that you shout in your car but it's about...y'know who knows exactly, this is a pop song (in a good way), but it's about loss and a relationship that once was and the images she holds in her mind of that person? At least that's what I think it's about. I'm happy with what I think it's about.

"Supercut" was playing as I came up on the Parker Mesa Overlook in the middle of a Long Slow Distance (LSD. lol) run today; I was doing an LSD as a total audible; I called the audible mid-run, and instead of doing a shorter run-and-then-take-a-yoga-class-later type plan I redirected my whole day around the LSD as part of ongoing efforts to figure out how to master myself and my time.

This isn't the most interesting pic of the Overlook, but it's clear and representative. The Lady was on the bench on the right; I was on the bench on the left; I took her picture in that gap in the middle.

As I came up, no music in my ears, the only other person there was an Attractive Lady.

"You ran the whole way?" She asks this before my headphones are out, but I'd smiled at her so it doesn't seem weird.

I nod-smile and  she asks me how long that was.

I don't know how I know, but I know--from the manner of her taking pictures, from I don't know, I just know--that she isn't a trailhead.

My response to this realization is to give her, of course unintentionally, the most convoluted trailheaded answer possible to her question, based on the fact that I don't know where she's come up from and there are all these different...anyway. At one point I interrupt myself with "sorry this is way more than you needed" and she says something like "No I asked" which I thought was nice because it was friendly, but it also acknowledged the clear truth of the situation, which was me failing Casual Social Interactions 101 (I am a bad student in this class, in general, and have mostly stopped trying unless someone else's reputation or well-being are involved in my behavior).

Then she approaches and with what feels like summoned pluck says, "Well you're going to take my picture." She holds out her phone. It's in a pink case that perhaps even has a sticker or something like that.

I laugh and start wiping my hands; she says "so...that's all sweat" which I can tell she does not intend in a mean way but is a little...it's not so much calling attention to the fact of my being sweaty (I'm, like, so sweaty) but the way it sort of focuses both of our attention on my combined semi-nakedness and sweatiness. She is not that naked at all, for a person on these trails; she has an ordinary summer dress on that is not short/revealing, and a hat.

I was this sweaty, with this much clothes on. (I had shoes on. Such as my running "shoes" are, at this point.)

So I take her picture and I suggest that she take her hat off and I think for a second she thinks I'm either hitting on her or being artistic and then she relaxes and is like, "Oh for my face."

And I'm like "Yeah, so we know it's not a body double."

And she's like "Yeah, ha, that's me." The way she inflects 'that's me' makes me realize that she's playing on the idea that what I was saying was a compliment or comment on her body or something, and I feel bad about that but she doesn't seem upset (not that this means she isn't upset; she just doesn't seem it) and we roll on.

I take a few more pictures of her; she does things with her hair, which (her hair) can only be describes as being in 'tresses.' She does things with her tresses, floomping them out to the side, I think because they were all kinked up inside her hat.

Does anyone ever have a tress? There is a singular form of that word.

I hand her back her phone

and we have a few volleying back-and-forths;

she offers information about her not coming to LA very often; she says a thing about where she's from (in the totally sensible format of comparing this hike to hikes she's familiar with, in her local geography).

I'm friendly, I think; I guess I don't offer equivalent information about myself but I felt I offered a lot answering her as I did, showing up as a sweaty half-naked man on this hilltop in the middle of the mountains.

Anyway it's a positive interaction. Or, y'know.

And then I say "have a nice walk down"

and she smiles and says something I don't quite make out through the music, but it's a wave-goodbye type of thing,

and I'm back down the trail towards home
and "Supercut" plays again: building beats, tight melody line, words about who knows but I think:
having once been with someone and how that was nice and you're not anymore but you have the sad beautiful pictures left in your memory.

Don't Know What She Looks Like

So here's an odd thing: I've thought so much on this post that it was basically written when I logged in tonight; written and in-fact revised a few times. Which meant I was certain I had in fact drafted it. But I hadn't! I'd just spent lots of time in my head.

You now know my inner life. It may looks much like yours, with different particulars.

Here are some of my particulars:

You know how it is, that it sometimes only takes a couple of instances for a practice or habit to become that thing that you do Mondays (or whatever)? A version of that that I'm having is this: I've been five or six times, in total, but a thing that I like to do Mondays--when I can--is go to this yoga teacher's really excellent class at Yogaworks (gorgeous) Westlake Village location. I go early, to "avoid traffic", even though in fact there is very little traffic in either direction between Topanga and Westlake Village at any time of day; I camp out in a great place to work for the afternoon (I never buy food; I buy one cup of coffee, take advantage of refills, and semi-surreptitiously eat protein bars; I tip well).

What's good about this teacher's class for me is that it is about music and flow and has a distinct and I would say joyful energy; it's not particularly technical re: what she calls out but it's athletic and moves fast and is a class where she gives you the room to do stuff that you want and the vibe of the class validates that: doing stuff that you want. It's a class where people think it's fun, or at worst cool wutever, if there's a sweaty guy in the front doing arm balances, rather than people thinking that's...whatever. Anyway.

The point of this post is
I've been to this teacher's class I'd say five or six times,
I'd like to go a bunch more,
and I have very little idea what she looks like.
I'm trying to keep it that way.

It started the first time I went to her class. I had pushed myself to do a bit of an exploration; Westlake Village isn't that far from where I live, but you have to want to go there from where I live. And/but I was having trouble finding classes I liked close to me, so exploring seemed smart. And so I'd pushed myself to do this afternoon exploration, and I'd done the thing with the coffee and sneaking my protein bars, and I was either tired or pissed off or one of these dumb stupid things that I get, so for the preamble to and the start of that very first class I was on my back, then face down and just doing the flow, not looking around, not saying hi to the teacher. And she is particularly mobile, particularly vocal: she's a chatty and dynamic presence, padding around, making jokes/observations (another reason I like her class: my favorite thing is when yoga teachers simply do not do the "yoga teacher talking" stuff. BUT, if they must, it's better if it is interesting/not dumb. This teacher is uniformly interesting, always generous, and never dumb; she veered into woo-woo like, one time for one sentence, and immediately laughed about it and etc.).

Anyway the point is I got about half-an-hour into my first class with her and I realized two things:

1. I really liked her voice; both for itself (she has a nice voice, she says good stuff), and for the quality it had, bouncing around in this gorgeous high-ceiling'ed studio; and
2. I had no idea what she looked like. Which was a little bit helping me love her voice, more.

So basically I decided to just go with that. And I have.

I know that she is a slim, Caucasian woman. I know that she has dark brown or maybe black hair. I have a couple of concepts regarding her nose. But beyond that: nothing. I do not think I could pick her out of a lineup. When I got that link for you, above, the one to her website, I averted my eyes from the screen where it showed so I again saw just "slim white lady dark hair".

I know that this affects my affect in class. I say "thank you" at the end, of course, or I do when the opportunity arises (it's a big class; she's very popular, chatting with regulars after). But I do not look up and make eye-contact during; I have never engaged with her, directly face-on. This is probably not weird from her viewpoint, at all; it's not like every yoga student has lots of face-on interactions with every yoga teacher. But it's a little weird for me: I tend to like connecting at least once or twice per class with teachers I like; a smile, a joke, whatever. If she has perceived any aspect of this, at all, I imagine she thinks that I'm shy or whatever. Or possibly cold, I guess -- I'd prefer not to think that but I suppose it could be.

But I...love it. I love not really having a physical concept of her. Having nothing to do with blahBLAHblah all that; I just love knowing her only as a presence, a voice. It makes her exist purely as a presence, a voice. And of course she is a whole person, with a whole-person life, and in fact because she has added nice things to my life I wish her nothing but goodness in that whole-person life. But as she weaves through my life: she's a good yoga teacher; that's her principal role. And until the day--it will come--when I glance up at the wrong time and BAM: FULL INSTANTIATION -- until that happens she lives as a voice and a form and a practice and thoughts I enjoy and appreciate exactly for themselves.

Trick Yourself

[veeeerrry genuine disclaimer: this post is about physicality (running). I include #s in it because these #s are specific and real to my story. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the #s do not matter, in themselves; I am disgusted with myself because these are my #s, and my failure to reach them is my failure. Many people have #s that are faster/stronger -- awesome awesome awesome friend, good for you; some people have #s that are maybe lower/less fast -- if you are crushing your #s you are crushing it. With hardness. If any of my self-snark conveys some opposite point, that is the bile of my heart staining the intent of my expression; that is the opposite of the meaning I'd like to present. When I fail my goals I feel bad; here's a way I kinda got around that sort-of close-to, today. That's the point; the #s don't matter and should be normed to the reader's experience.]

Last night, as I often do, I kind of sketched out my hope for my run this a.m. The hope that I sketched out was 10 miles; I knew as I "sketched" it that it was very unlikely, almost surely would not happen. My right abductor is screwed up, I've got some kind of "sportsman's hernia" bullshit going on, my hip flexors are all out of whack probably because of ways I've been compensating for these things.

Also, I'm in Chicago, which means that
(a) the weather is more likely to be sh1tty (indeed: was forecast to be sh1tty, and was sh1tty), and
(b) I'll be running just on endless flats, and after years of trail-running I find the mental stamina of long flat runs pretty draining; after 2 or 3 miles I feel like I've run 7 or 8, mentally, because physically and spatially it's all just boring/the same.

And (a) and (b) interact, because (a) meant I would not have music (my phone works crappily enough already, without another soaking in the Chicago rain).

I woke up this morning and the weather was sh1tty; I at once downgraded my run to a "fast 4" -- 4 miles, splits under 7'/mile. I knew, as I sketched this, I wouldn't make it -- my legs are messed up fatigued excuses excuses.

I got out by around 5:45am; my f#cking feet got wet at once and I was like, "fuck this. my legs hurt my shit's tired my feet are wet; fuck this."

0.31 miles into my run I turned around to go back in. I was gonna do a Yoga Sculpt class at Hyde Park's Core Power Yoga; this wasn't a great idea because (a) I did one of these yesterday; psychologically and physically it's probably better to cross-train; (b) those classes are freaking expensive (especially compared to a free run); and (c) it was 5:55a.m. or whatever -- the class was at 8am. So basically the morning would be chopped up into unusable bits and I'd be burning a lot of the day fuddling around.

But I was so mad and disgusted with myself that I literally turned around, not "turned around", and then turned around again to go back out on the run because...well here we go: first, I told myself I'd do intervals.

There's a workout I've programmed in my Garmin called (natch) "Intervals"; 6 2.5-minute splits of running fast (target is low 6s or high 5s) with cooldowns of equal length in between. So I'm like, "look, your splits will suck, but at least you will have pushed it...done a thing. It'll be a short run but you'll have done a thing."

I did very, very shitty intervals. They were slow. I was running into the wind for the first half and my legs were tired and I am a weak litany of failures; they were terrible intervals.

But I did them. And I was finishing, having run about 4 miles, approaching the point to turn back inland off of the lakefront trail, I was like: okay, so, okay this sucks you suck fine but you're not in pain fine run 2 miles or 15 minutes, whichever comes first.

So I did that and, to my ongoing shame and disgust, 15 minutes came first (just!) and whatever I pushed past it a bit ran 2.3 or so miles.

Running back I made an honest mistake (ran out on a promontory that did not reconnect to the land, had to double back) that added some more distance.

Total length for that segment: 5.63 miles.

So my total length on the day was 9.67 miles.

This is no big deal. I did not reach my goal; it was a slow crappy moody crappy run, and I am a slow crappy moody crappy guy. BUT there was something useful/interesting to me, here.

Like anyone who works out, ever, I of course do various things to "trick myself" into pushing past certain obstacles. "Just run fast until..."; "just swim hard for...". Whatever whatever. And of course when you have someone training you, that's the big advantage of that--if they're good, the point of them is to take on some of theme metering and pushing. But most of us do it our own in some way, and even in my anger right now I recognize that as part of the satisfaction of these physical activities at which I am such a pathetic and abject failure.

But what I did this morning was interesting and different, in that I actually tricked myself. I was not saying, "just do the shorter interval run and we'll see how we feel." I was not thinking "2 miles or 15 minutes, whichever comes first" (fingers crossed). I meant it! In every part of my conscious brain and intention, I thought that that's what I was going to do. I was going to stop after my intervals -- even though they were crappy (I knew they'd be crappy, although they were perhaps even crappier than feared). I was totally going to run "2 miles or 15 minutes".

But maybe I wasn't? Maybe somewhere in me--and again, I really really do not mean with any conscious intention at all--I had some idea that I wouldn't, that I'd push past if I could? Because as I run past the 2 mile mark (I ran about 18 minutes out, the 2.3 miles or whatever), I did shake my head and laugh and talk to myself as if to someone else: "James you motherfucker. Ha. Okay. Okay."

So that's the point of this post: that maybe this is a good strategy, too. It's probably a natural extension of just do it; that's probably basically still the best strategy ever. And the knowing mental games are useful -- you can't trick yourself all the time. But I mean: I really did, or insofar as I could have told you at the time I did, this morning. And I'm certainly glad I did -- pathetic and mismade I may be  (am!), I'm less pathetic and mismade than I'd feel if I hadn't pushed past and at least kinda done a thing.

Wish I'd done the math earlier and just finished the 10.

Hong Kong #8: [Interlude -- fitness]

This is technically a "Hong Kong" post, because it is about things that occurred in that place. But really it's a chatty post about "fitness services in dense urban markets", so I mean...if you're not into that, np: roll on. No Big Takeaway waits @ the end. ;)

The anchor workout I do when I travel, and certainly when I travel in Hong Kong, is run. Because you can do it anywhere, right? You bring your shoes you find runs you go run: hooray. I have written here about how great Hong Kong can be for running.

But it's also fun to "explore"; for me lately that means a disappointing comparison of every-city-but-L.A.'s yoga to L.A.'s yoga, and what I can find in terms of "other interesting stuff". In Hong Kong, re: "other...stuff", I have had the invaluable guidance of a man called Damien Brosnan, a f*cking human awesomemachine whose most obvious traits are conspicuous decency and intelligence.

DB has guided me to a few fun "other...stuff" workouts in HK, and this post is about a place called Ursus Fitness; I'm on record already as being very positive about this place and its people -- this post is really about how I personally respond to certain things in group-fitness context.

Here's a spreadsheet. No I'm not kidding. This is drawn from a blackboard they had up, tracking us all; it was neat and fun! Everyone else did what I did, too, which was take a snap on their phone at the end. From which I made this spreadsheet.

Only one name on here is the person's name, btw. Oh well actually none, I guess. But you know what I mean.

So here: "Ursus Fit Friday Whole Body F##k Up", that day that I took it in Feb 2017.

(you can totally skip it; it's incomprehensible)

	Aero	Press	Wall Ball	Burpees	Rainbow Twists	Kettle-bell Swings
Matthew	25	28	21	21	110	35
	20	25	25	19	116	33
Kevin	21	35	29	21	106	39
	19	35	33	20	105	36
Slimbuttons	29	30	35	17	131	34
	23	37	39	21	131	35
Seb	29	25	34	15	83	37
	19	22	33	15	89	35
Vicky	18	21	34	9	120	29
	13	21	33	11	128	35
Barbara	15	24	29	14	106	38
	15	25	32	17	110	40
Noura	15	21	20	14	109	41
	15	25	26	16	112	50
Jane	13	30	22	18	90	23
	11	24	25	18	97	35
Martha	15	21	29	16	108	35
	12	23	33	17	115	36
Nicoletta	20	14	20	9	80	40
	11	16	18	11	33	40
Nanca	14	25	36	19	108	35
	13	28	35	18	123	36
Mary	19	43	41	21	125	37
	15	45	45	22	119	39
Liang	18	14	18	9	88	30
	14		24	11	106	25
Overall Average	17.34615385	26.28	29.57692308	16.11538462	105.6923077	35.69230769
1st round overall	19.30769231	25.46153846	28.30769231	15.61538462	104.9230769	34.84615385
2nd round overall	15.38461538	27.16666667	30.84615385	16.61538462	106.4615385	36.53846154
Male overall average	23.125	29.625	31.125	18.625	108.875	35.5
Male 1st round	26	29.5	29.75	18.5	107.5	36.25
Male 2nd round	20.25	29.75	32.5	18.75	110.25	34.75
Female overall average	14.77777778	24.70588235	28.88888889	15	104.2777778	35.77777778
Female 1st round	14.7	21.3	24.9	12.9	93.4	30.8
Female 2nd round	11.9	23	27.1	14.1	94.3	33.6
	Aero	Press	Wall Ball	Burpees	Rainbow Twists	Kettle-bell Swings
my 1st Round	29	30	35	17	131	34
my 2nd Round	23	37	39	21	131	35
Class 2-round Avg	17.1	26.1	29.8	15.8	103.6	35.0
my ⇑ vs avg	51.7%	28.4%	24.0%	20.2%	26.5%	-1.5%
Class 1st Round Avg	18.3	24.2	28.4	15.1	101.9	34.9
my ⇑ vs avg	58.9%	24.2%	23.4%	12.4%	28.6%	-2.5%
Class 2nd Round Avg	16.4	27.5	30.8	16.3	104.7	35.2
my ⇑ vs avg	40.3%	34.5%	26.5%	29.1%	25.1%	-0.4%
Male 2-round Avg	14.4	24.3	29.6	16.1	98.6	36.8
my ⇑ vs avg	80.9%	38.1%	24.9%	17.8%	32.8%	-6.1%
Male 1st Round Avg	11.8	22.8	27.8	16.0	92.0	36.8
my ⇑ vs avg	146.8%	31.9%	26.1%	6.3%	42.4%	-7.5%
Male 2nd Round Avg	17	25.75	31.5	16.25	105.25	36.75
my ⇑ vs avg	35.3%	43.7%	23.8%	29.2%	24.5%	-4.8%
Female 2-round Avg	17.6	28.2	30.1	16.1	105.7	34.2
my ⇑ vs avg	147.7%	118.7%	123.0%	118.1%	124.0%	100.8%
Female 1st Round Avg	16.2	22.2	23.7	12.8	86.5	28.1
my ⇑ vs avg	79.4%	35.1%	47.9%	32.4%	51.5%	20.8%
Female 2nd Round Avg	14.6	25.7	27.7	14.7	95.0	30.7
my ⇑ vs avg	57.1%	44.0%	40.9%	43.0%	37.9%	14.2%

So okay literally the inclusion of this spreadsheet has made my whole point, in a "picture=1k werdz" way.

That point is: wtF is wrong with my kettle-bell swings?

No no no, l0l, the point is...

Well first lemme say: I do wish I had a place like Ursus near me. I have LOTS of crossfit/circuit training places near me, but (a) Ursus is just unusually rad, not cuz it's fun and in HK but because it is; and (b) it has a real emphasis on strength training in a circuit/interval context, and I could use more of that.

BUT.

What the f##k does it do to my head? I don't have answers here. I'm saying workouts like this provoke that question in me. I mean look at this spreadsheet I f##king went and made. That is not a thing that I 'did for a post'.

I have friends who Do Stuff Seriously, and I've done some stuff seriously over the last few years. And I certainly take my physical regimen and my physical self pretty 'seriously'. But...straight up, honestly, I don't. I mean...I think it's important for me now, and will only get more important as time passes, to both affirm and activate the conviction that I do physical stuff, which I do a lot of!, because I am fundamentally if not exclusively motivated by joy. Plus, perhaps, a general sense that it's good to be healthy and active and moving, much as you can.

There's a whole host of other worthwhile motivations one could name; the last trap I'm going to fall into is pigeon-holing the psychology of people who throw themselves deeply into physical activity of one kind or another. I'm saying for me. And I also don't even mean, for me, to hate on Ursus's approach, here; if I were lucky enough to get an Ursus or Ursus-like place near me, I'm confident I could go a couple times a week and have a good time and not fall into any of the psychological traps I'd be prone to with this.

I'm really just ruminating in and around a thing: why I do fitness the way that I do. Why do you do fitness, the way that you do? (Do you do fitness? You should, some way). What the role of beating yourself is, in something recreational: i.e., something that is not 'your work'. What the role of beating other people is, in such things; I think I'm tabling cases where the point is, at least sometimes, beating someone else or the other team or whatever. I'm talking about the practice of setting up comparative metrics where it's not about winning the game.

Or: what is 'the game'? How do you define it?

Like, what: I don't notice when there's someone in yoga who's crushing it? I do -- and I like it: it's aspirational and inspirational, and makes me feel like I'm in the right class. But just...yeah.

I, me, have to cautious about, I have reservations about, this kind of stuff. For me. Also: I find value and pleasure in this kind of stuff! And also must be cautious about it.

etc.

Anyhow. S/b out.