What's the last thing you woke up from a dream yelling?

For me — and this happened last night — it was: "There's a reason there's a rule against jumping on the furniture."

I even said it twice. It was, apparently, an important revelation in the world of a dream of which I have no memory.

"So bleak. We had a few tornadoes come by this way over the weekend, and the sky looked happier than that."

Says a commenter, Rt41Rebel, looking at yesterday's sunrise photographs. The cloud conditions at sunrise are crucial to my sunrise photography, but they can give a false impression of what will happen later in the day. We had a lovely hike in Blue Mound State Park in the early afternoon, and there was a nice — not excessive — infusion of sunlight. 

Meade photographed me climbing the winding trail toward the end of a 4-mile hike:

Notice the slashes of sunlight:

Walking slowly to take in the last moments of a nice 4-mile walk in the UW Arboretum this afternoon...

... I'm surprised to find Meade taking video...

 

... or I'd have walked more jauntily.

And here's a picture I took of the Big Spring:

 

And one Meade took of me:

Talk about anything you like in the comments.

And if you want Kahtoola MICROspikes like mine to make your 4-mile hike on ice and snow secure, you can buy them here. For running shoes, I go with Kahtoola NANOspikes, here. Thanks for using those Amazon links that give me a commission, and here's the Althouse portal link, which is always also in the sidebar.

I told you I was going to do something today that I've never done before.

I shot a gun!

I'm going to do something today that I've never done before.

Try to guess. If you begin with "I hope it's..." I predict somebody will get it quickly.

IN THE COMMENTS: The second commenter, Rockeye said:

Going shooting. A boy can hope.

That's the answer. I shot a gun!

I had 2 hours of training and practice at shooting range.

AND: Here's my new post with video.

What I wanted to learn.

I wanted to take the "Master Class" from David Sedaris, but I couldn't bring myself to pay $99 for a subscription to the app until I saw that they also had a class from Billy Collins, a poet I've liked ever since I randomly picked a book off a high shelf at Paul's Books and read one poem.

Both Sedaris and Collins, I see now, begin their writing by noticing some little thing that is present in their own life. Both teach that you ought to carry a notebook with you everywhere and jot down these little things as they happen.

That's all writing. Of course, I wanted to learn about writing, but what else? Master Class has 80+ famous people teaching how they each do their thing. I've watched 2 others, neither in the writing category. I watched Bobbi Brown, who teaches about makeup — the kind of makeup that honors whatever face you happen to have. (You do not need to "contour" your nose or "overline" your lips.) And I watched Alice Waters, the restaurateur, who says you really need to start your cooking by getting in touch with your local vegetables.

Do you see the theme of these 4, which I chose without thinking of a theme? The theme occurred to me as I was doing my sunrise run this morning. I don't listen to headphoned-in music anymore when I run. I listen to the immediate environment and let thoughts rise up from within my own head, and I got where I could see how these 4 choices represented a single desire on my part. All these lessons have to do with awareness of what is right here.

When I got back to my car, the radio was on MSNBC, which I'd listened to on my little drive out to my running place. I'd put up with Joe Scarborough angsting about Republicans being less likely  to wear masks than Democrats — what is wrong with them?! — but I didn't want that infecting me on the ride home. I clicked over to music. It was Neil Young:

Come a little bit closer
Hear what I have to say
Just like children sleeping
We could dream this night away
But there's a full moon rising
Let's go dancing in the light
We know where the music's playing
Let's go out and feel the night

Neil was getting what was for him an unusual idea: To go out and experience the moon.



I got the idea a while back to get out and experience the sunrise, to go running in the light.

"So... I don't get what's 'problematic' with Madonna's putting her son's incredible dance on Insta? Thanks, in any case, it was great to see it."

That's the first comment I read on the New York Magazine article, "What Do We Want From White Celebrities Right Now?" Here's the section that labels Madonna "problematic":

[S]ome celebs have shown up to protest. Others have “opened up their purses” and lent their voices to decry racism and support detailed and specific calls for reform. But just like the rest of us, they have some problematic colleagues: Madonna celebrating her son’s interpretive solidarity dance; Ashton Kutcher posting an incongruously emotional video about Black Lives Matter that veered off on a bizarre and lengthy tangent about parenting; Ellen DeGeneres tweeting “for things to change, things must change”; Drew Brees’s willfully ignorant understanding of peaceful protests and inability to have his mind opened by the steady murders of Black people on film.... More of these bizarre blathers will surely come....

Here's Madonna's son's interpretative solidarity dance. The son is black, it helps to know. You can judge for yourself. According to Madonna: "David Dances to honor and pay tribute to George and His Family and all Acts of Racism and Discrimination that happen on a daily basis in America." Yes, it's miswritten. She didn't mean "to honor...  all Acts of Racism," but that is what she said.

Maybe I don't understand the way dance works these days. I was driving home this morning at 5:30 a.m. and a man up ahead of me was crossing the street in the middle of the block. I drove slowly. It didn't matter to me. There was a red light up ahead anyway. Midway through his crossing, he did a little dance, complete with pirouette. Was he dancing for me? Was he honoring some abstraction?

There was this guy...



And this...

"Isn't it beautiful?" — a middle-aged white woman enthused gently...

... as I was photographing this...



... in downtown Madison. Maybe she was just trying to say the right thing, but maybe she was delusional or had very low standards. I aim to help — and I have to admit that she wasn't the slightest bit intimidating to me — so I said, "Actually, I don't think this one is very good." In my endless search for positivity, I added that there were a lot of other murals and many of them were good. And then, because I'm always looking for a point of agreement, I said, "The eye is... interesting"....



Despite or maybe because of the roughness of the painting, it has a creepy drippiosity that's vaguely riveting....

5:44 a.m.

"Wow. 12 days ago I began a silent meditation in the desert. We were totally isolated. No phone, no communication etc. We had no idea..."

"... what was happening outside the facility. Walked out yesterday into a very different world. One that's been changed forever. Mind blowing — to say the least. I'm getting messages from friends and family all around the globe and catching up on what's going on. Hope you and yours are ok. Sending positive energy to all. Stay inside. Stay safe."

Writes the actor Jared Leto on Instagram.

Maybe your life already involved so much isolation that the new requirements of social distancing only mean that other people are forced to be like you. The voluntary self-isolators among us may be able to give us some perspective of what we need to do.

I'm not so isolated that I was like Leto, not hearing the news. I'm watching the news — in my way — every day. But I keep a distance from people in real life — not as much as the new rules of social distancing require, but I don't have to change very much, and I am comfortable living this way and I don't have any immediate responsibilities that make it hard for me to tighten up the seclusion and contribute to the group effort.

Thinking about people like Leto who choose a 12-day silent meditation in the desert may be of some help in thinking how to use the solitary time that has been imposed on you. Perhaps you will sit quietly in your room and do nothing. Meditate!

It's a good idea not to watch the continual flow of news reports, many of which are designed to make you feel bad, to increase the difficulty of doing what you need to do.

Less rigorous than the Jared-Leto-silent-meditation approach to living in seclusion is the Althouse approach. I like it. I read things that feel valuable to me and I put some of my thoughts into words and accept interaction from strangers who read and write here and elsewhere. I have the great benefit of a companion here with me, someone to talk with in a comfortable and supportive way, to be calm with, to help and to be helped by. I care for my health — and that includes eating the right things in the right amount, going for a sunrise run and a midday walk, sleeping well, and not stressing out.

You can think about what you are missing, but maybe, too, you'll think about the things you were doing that you don't really miss. Simplify! Here's Thoreau on the subject:

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.... Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.... The nation itself, with all its so called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it as for them is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain....

Your blogger at sunrise.

Photo of me by Meade:



And, thanks to Meade, I got to pose, unaware, in a panorama along with the sun and the moon (click and click again to enlarge):