Winter Walk, Mid-City

Wendall -- every other Thursday

I'm continuing my ode to Los Angeles with a revisit of the palm trees on my old Hancock Park Walk.  It's such a great walking city, it's tragic no one walks!

I think I’ve mentioned before that James and I moved in the fall, so 2024 begins my first official year away from my Los Angeles neighborhood of 37 years. I love our new place, but of course there are things I miss about our old life, and in the end, I think the things I miss most are the trees and plants and spaces I used to see on my daily walks.

 

I’ve been so taken with Annamaria’s photo essays of late, today I decided to tell a story with pictures instead of blabbering like usual, and so am offering up a few images of winter walks in my old neighborhood: Mid-City Los Angeles.

 

No filters on any of these, this is just the way it looks in the morning...

Here's hoping all of you have somewhere lovely to walk while you ease in the New Year. 

 ~~ Wendall

You can find links to a new interview about LOST LUGGAGE on NPR's Dog Talk (#864A) here:   

 https://traciehotchnerpets.com/shows/dog-talk/

 

My Morning Shift

Sujata Massey 

A few weeks ago, I had the fun of interviewing a literary lion in Washington DC—and I received a gift that went far beyond the signed copy of a book.

 

Sir Alexander McCall Smith was touring the United States in support of one of his newest novels, The Great Hippopotamus Hotel, and organizers at the Hill Center, a Capitol Hill landmark building, invited me to ask him about a quarter century of writing all kinds of books.

 

I’ve mentioned McCall Smith’s newest novels in plural. In 2024, he’s released three other books: The Perfect Passion Company, a comic novel about matchmaking set in Edinburgh; The Conditions of Unconditional Love, the fifteenth book about philosopher Isabel Dalhousie; and The Stellar Debut of Galactica MacFee, another epistle in the Scotland Street social satire series. 

 

The lecture room at the Hill Center was packed with almost 100 rapt fans who’d all properly reserved seats ahead of time, with some waitlist members crowding the edges while standing on foot. Everyone was all smiles. Sir Alexander is a true Scottish gentleman and an excellent joker. He’s not one to toot his own horn, but he did come forward and answer my questions about his work, including the fact he doesn’t know the total number of books he’s written: just that it’s over one hundred, and that he averages the publication of three or four books every year. 

 

Writers who have joyful careers running at high productive speed are often asked for advice about how they manage. Alexander McCall Smith shared that he doesn’t have to revise much because his brain delivers sentences to him in a stream-of-consciousness fashion—they come to him just as they appear in print to us months later. He described being in a mild dissociative state when he works, writing about 1000 words (or four pages) per hour. 

 

People’s eyes widened when he described beginning his workday very early—sometimes as early as three in the morning, which he described as a melancholic time also known as “the hour of the wolf.” Instead of lying in bed feeling frustrated at having the interrupted sleep, he gets up to write. And generally, he is done with all of the day’s writing before lunchtime. 

 

I’ve been an early riser for a long time—but my habit has been to go through a lengthy morning routine before starting to write. This looks like coffee, journaling, dog feeding and walking, tidying some rooms and putting in a load of laundry, and cooking a real breakfast. Oh, and perhaps a glance at the papers and five minutes watching Stephen Colbert reruns online with my husband. You can quickly see that writing gets shifted to the end and sometimes I’m lucky to have an hour and a half for writing before heading out to lunch or an 11:30 gym class. 

 

That was BEFORE talking with Alexander McCall Smith. In the last few weeks I’ve risen when I wake, usually between four and six am. I have the first half of my coffee in front of the fire, and then I take the cup upstairs to my study and turn on the laptop. I work for a solid hour before thinking of breakfast and anything else. And I must say: I’m writing faster and better, and I still have the interest to write more in the morning, even after breakfast and the dog walk. If I wake way too early—say 3:30 a.m.—I will find myself rising if I can’t return to sleep within 30 minutes. And I read or write then for an hour, and I go back to sleep. My brain is fine with this routine, as long as I give it space for  a cozy afternoon nap (early afternoon, so as not to screw up falling asleep later).

 

 

I’m also reading a productivity book called Hyper-Efficent by a researcher named Mithu Storoni. Dr. Storoni has pulled together many research studies on brain performance to develop her original framework of three gears for the brain, ranging from highly focused to scattered, and also a flexible stage in which one can flip from different focus areas. You can’t change the gear your brain is in at the moment; but you can recognize what’s going on internally by planning tasks and relaxation around your own clock. 

 

In gear theory, early morning is the time the brain can most easily sink into a creative well.  For most of us, though, this prime time is spent eating, helping others start their day, and traveling to work. As the day goes on, our brains will always become fatigued—it’s not a personal fault. Yet our brains can regain focus and happy strength following 15-minute breaks with different kinds of activities. For instance, writers who’s had their eyes locked on a screen would probably recharge best by taking a short walk that brings their eyes to rest on trees and sky and nature. Someone working with very difficult information or tense, unpleasant personal interactions (say at a hospital or a tollbooth) might recover their emotional reserve taking Instagram break scrolling cute animal videos. 

 

I was flat-out thrilled to have it confirmed that the most successful way to initiate intellectual activity later in the day is following a nap. Storoni found that late afternoon is the second most efficient period in the day for most brains. Because my day started at four today, and included a midmorning water aerobics session, I’d worried that I might lack the energy the to write this blogpost later in the day. However, after lunch I napped for an hour, and got up to have a cup of green tea and started writing without any kind of hesitation. 

 

I’ve been blogging for Murder is Everywhere on alternate Wednesdays for ten years. There are days I’ve regretfully missed posting because of writing deadlines and my inability to shift to a second project on the same day. I'm also very different from Alexander McCall-Smith in that I haven't got multiple publishers expecting me to write various novels and short stories in the same calendar year. I am satisfied researching, writing and revising a book every eighteen months (although the publishing cycle sometimes draws the book’s release a bit longer).  

 

My chance encounter with a veteran novelist, and the coincidences in his working style with brain's Circadian rhythms, have been illuminating. Now I’ve got a plan of how to make use of my chronic insomnia, and I can accept that I can’t force my brain to run when it wants to rest. Taken together, all of it goes a long way to make writing more enjoyable. 

A Morning In My Life (or: NoticingTransitions)

 Ovidia--every other Tuesday

See the green shoots? This is the transition I'm happiest about right now--those little green spikes are signs there may be a transition from death to life for my bonsai citrus!

This poor little bonsai tree looked dead when I got back to Singapore. But I trimmed (branches and roots) and repotted it because I have nothing to lose if it was already dead, but if it isn't--

And after a couple of dormant days, these green shoots just appeared--so I think we have a chance! It's still touch and go, though.

I've been thinking about Transitions because of a talk at the Yoga Shala last Sunday. Most of us (well, me) expected it to be about not skipping vinyasas, but it turned out to be something much more profound.

I always thought of vinyasas as unnecessarily tiring transitions from one seated pose to another. What I just learned is that 'used' correctly, they are a time/space to recentre yourself and your breathing and let go of any frustrations attached to the previous pose or any fears connected to the next one. And you don't need to Do anything. Just pausing and deciding "I'm going to be in this moment" can make it easier to get on with the next pose or next project of your day. 

So I decided to try it this morning: instead of reading or listening to a podcast, I would try to be mindful and document my morning "transition" times.

5:30am: Getting Up

Out of bed and on to the computer to do my Morning Pages (I started after reading the Artist's Way and now I use a site called 750words.com. It helps clear my head and figure out what the day's tasks and goals will be. This is where I work through ideas for my WIPs or sort out solutions to plot tangles. After brain dumping here, it's easy to transfer everything to Scrivener for cleaning up.

Then I print out my day's "bingo card" (everything from laundry and arranging for the carpet cleaner to come to word count targets--because sometimes when I'm really tired, completing something just so I can tick off a box is the only motivation I can get my brain around). 

Then I make our breakfast oatmeal...

This is what we have every day: rolled oats, wheat germ, flax seeds, chia seeds, salt, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, raisins and blueberries. All the ingredients are in pull out punnets so I can fix it on autopilot. It's what I miss most when traveling, no matter how fancy hotel breakfasts are!

Served with greek yoghurt mine on the left with soy milk. Beloved's on the right with cow milk goes into the fridge till he gets up at 7, but I eat mine at the computer while clearing my emails. If there's anything to be discussed on Zoom (I really HATE Zooming) this is usually when it happens. 

If there's time I'll visit Facebook and look in on blogs I follow... but not today.

7:30am: Heading Out

Gateway to the park and the bus stop just across the road.

Usually I'll be listening to a podcast or audiobook, but today I'm trying to 'be aware' and enjoy the transition. Met a friendly dog in the park, which was very nice. I still miss my two so much, though!

Since our darling doglets departed, we've given up the second car so I'm heading out on public transport--and so grateful for our nearby bus stops!

This is the one that starts me on my journey to yoga:

Any bus from here gets me to the station. Today a lovely lady bus driver was wishing every passenger 'Good morning' and 'How are you?' as we boarded, despite how crowded it was!

And I got to help an old man off the bus, which made me feel a) younger than I'd felt when I got on, and b) useful--like maybe there was a point to me being alive and on that spot in that moment.

I was so carried away by my good works that I forgot to tap out getting off the bus (if you forget to tap out you can get charged the maximum fare for the route!) I called out to the lady driver and she said, 'No problem, I do for you'. 

And I discovered she'd cancelled my fare--meaning I've just cheated the bus company of 61 cents! 

This is the walk from the bus stop to Beauty World Station--very pleasant in the early morning when it's still cool and even a little chilly.

And then down into the bowels of the MRT...

Beauty World station is on the East-West Line (EW: Green on the map) and I change at Stevens to the Thomson-East Coast Line (TEL: Brown on the map) 

The connection involves quite a bit of walking--I'm so impressed by whoever designed and built all this underground without overly discombobulating the built up areas above ground!

And there's art work too, when I finally arrive at Outram Station.

But I'm very very glad to get back above ground and walking the rest of the way to the shala.

The trip usually takes me about an hour. If I take a bus all the way there it takes over an hour, but then that's an hour of reading time. Whereas today's route is a little faster and got me over 4,000 steps on my Fitbit, just from walking between connections, so that's good too.

 8:30am: Arrive at the Shala

I'm not one of the early birds--they get in at 6:30am and are leaving by the time I get in between 8:30am and 9am.

Practice for me usually takes between an hour and 75 min. I'm still very much a beginner, but I'm coming to realise that turning up here, like doing my morning pages, is a practice that anchors the rest of my day.

Plus, since coming back to yoga here I haven't had any petit mals or full blown seizures (touch wood--maybe the wooden floor here helps!). I don't know if it's correlation or causation, but I love it!

And yes (because people always ask) there's plenty of showers with hot water here for after! About six units, but this is my favourite 2-in-1.

10:30am: Homeward Bound

I retrace my route home, but I'm picking up my lunch and our dinner on my way back to the MRT station.

Today's lunch is coming out of a vending machine--

I'm having a bibim salad and fruit cup, paid for with my Senior Citizen Concession Card.

This is what it looks like on the plate--and it came with this cute little folding fork!

And dinner is going to be 'zi char'; literally 'cook fry' it's a versatile and cheap Singapore fast food that's usually rice or noodles and whatever you pick or ask to have prepped.

This is what we'll be having tonight:

11:30am: Arrive home after retracing the outward journey.

I'm going to do a couple of DuoLingo lessons then write this up and get back to editing The Angsana Tree Mystery. Right now it feels like it could be a great book, but also that I'm never ever going to finish it, it's moving so slowly and I keep going back and reworking things that seem right one day and ridiculous the next...

But all I can do is put in the time and focus, so that's what I'll do. Wish me luck!