I have abandoned my pedometer ap, because it made me walk wrong. My doctor said "get more exercise" to lower my LDL cholesterol. A measurable act for a measurable problem. But, as I figured out by my reaction to walking with a pedometor ap, the one that daily declared me overweight based on my BMI, that shifts my focus away from being present on the walk to trying to up my step count, my pace, my calories burned, and on and on.
Numbers are abstract external measures, and though I love numbers, math, rational thinking. . . healing the body needs to extend beyond the measurable, the quantifiable. On my walk yesterday, I just walked and took pictures. I'm trying a new camera ap and so the pictures came out crappy for the most part (note: CameraOne ap not worth 99 cents). Walking with a camera makes me look more closely. It's an instrument that brings my focus to the present moment, no numbers, just a fresh perspective that there is beauty in my neighborhood. Here are some that came out okay. My neighborhood lacks iconic beauty. I don't live in a quaint hamlet in New England or Old England for that matter. My neighborhood is part of a huge sprawling 20th-century metropolis, laying on the desert like a big-footed teenaged boy plops himself on a couch. But what we have here that gets lost in trees and green hills of more compact romantic landscapes is sky. The sky is my surrogate Pacific Ocean, a vast blue that can stretch to the far horizon. When I'm feeling sorry for myself because I don't live at Baggins End in a hobbit hole, I pay attention to the sky.
Yesterday the canal water was running high and the park had been flooded for irrigation, so I could see the reflected sky. Like a Claude Glass, the reflection softens the view and allowed me to crop out alley trash and other scrappy bits of my neighborhood.
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