Birding and enjoying nature in Discovery Park, Seattle

Yesterday I walked this gem of the Seattle parks. It’s my second favorite place after Seward Park and it is also vast in area.

I visited the undulating prairie area that overlooks Puget Sound. The prairie ends in steep vertical cliffs that drop off abruptly where the soft sand continually gives way. I am a person of woods and waters but I like to check out prairies and I wonder if my North Dakotan mom imprinted this natural sympathy on me.

In the prairie I saw two little songsters: a savannah sparrow and a white-crowned sparrow. Each one had distinctive features that helped me when I looked them up. They sing from a prominent perch so you can get a good view.

The savannah sparrow had a yellow wash on its face. The white-crowned sparrow sports a little black-and-white crew cut.

Many other people were out enjoying the place by biking, trail running, birding, picnicking, playing with dogs and kids, and just sitting on benches and the ground taking in the views.

The exquisite ache of Trio Élégiaque by Rachmaninoff

Rachmaninoff has been a companion for many years. I sometimes feel I am listening to the music of life itself. Some of his music is dark and hints at a submerged and hidden well of experience, punctuated by a technical onslaught that grips your attention, like in Piano Concerto #2 opus 18.

Others, like Trio Élégiaque, provide an exquisite ache. I came across this term recently and found it matched my experience with this piece. For me, a favorite piece of music is always paired with a specific era in my personal history, and sometimes with a specific place or day. And Trio Élégiaque is paired with a hot day during the covid pandemic when I hiked up a long trail in the Columbia River Gorge and reflected on where life had led me so far, and on what a ride it’s been.

I love “Isle of the Dead” too. The composer’s imagination was carried away by a small black-and-white reproduction of a famous painting of a mythical place where the dead are ferried away to rest forever. He composed a magnificent piece of music based on this impression. Later, when he saw the full-color, full-size painting, he was underwhelmed. He liked the small black and white version better.

This was a good example of a rich mind’s ability to dilate on an impression and draw it out into adjacent and unexpected effects, like a drop of brilliant dye expanding in clear water in a way that’s endlessly complex and dynamic and impossible to predict.

Rachmaninoff was a “technician of the emotions.” He once said:

“The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt – they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.”

Rachmaninoff’s music exalts.

MY LATEST REDHEAD CRUSH: Jen Psaki, White House press secretary

Sharp, poised, smart and beautiful.

Her pupils and irises are similarly dark in color and shift from “get to the point” to warm humor instantly.

She favors solid colors and floral designs and sometimes has jewelry or a corsage and her shoulder-length red hair moves buoyantly and frames her pale face nicely.

She has the creamy white skin of a ginger, a long, symmetrical face and a quick smile that can be warm or subtlety impatient or mocking when the reporter is fumbling or just plain dumb (i.e. Fox News).

She addresses the reporter’s question conversationally while addressing them head on instead of addressing the room. She peppers her responses with comic jabs at political opponents.

A reporter asked if the administration had a messaging problem on an issue. Without missing a beat, she said the previous administration had a morality problem, and then launched into a cogent and complete response, one of several in that conference.

She has the fluidity and confidence of someone who knows she’s right. If we met, I would probably be very, very afraid of her. She is thin. I wonder what she does to work out.

Firefox browser readability button

On mobile and desktop, there is a little button in the URL bar that turns a noisy, crowded, ad- and toolbar-jammed page into a readable format. This allows you to read an article from start to finish without being prodded and interrupted.

Seattle bouldering gym

This place is half a mile from my home and has everything I need for complete fitness.

I joined two movement classes and they kicked my ass and opened me up to a new relationship to my body. For many years I ran. I put on many miles and sought to increase my mileage. I began to question this. What was the point?

I then moved on to strength training. This was extremely rewarding, but after getting strong and bulking up a bit, I wondered what that was all for. It seemed like another grind, where you put forth brute effort without developing skill and finesse.

Now, with movement, I am increasing what the instructors call “body intelligence.” As a gown man, entering a class and learning the most basic movements while feeling gauche and not knowing where my own limbs are feels like a keen transition. But as the instructors emphasized, I am setting down new neural pathways. Eventually conscious thought will cease to get in the way of putting one foot in front of the other and those pathways will be efficient and well-rutted.

For one class it was just me and the instructor, an attractive, muscular woman in her early 30s. I think about sex. A lot. And when she was up close, motioning to her hips and thighs and back and telling me to watch her and follow, I though about how she might move in the sack. And she probably knows how to move her body there in a way that’s as far from “starfish sex” as possible.

The other class was led my by a male instructor and his style was very different. The class was full and he pushed us hard. Some of the class involved pairing up and engaging in a boxing-like dance. This moves you beyond mastering your own movement and trying to meld and interact with that of another person, which is far more complex.

I have a lot to learn. I am grateful for an opportunity to scramble what I know, to start from scratch with a genuinely unassuming, defenseless, beginner’s mind.

About the photo

Discovery park, Seattle