I wrote a post about it last year if you want to check it out :) Usually we go down to the torrent because you can’t get lost with this itinerary; even when you don’t see anything you can hear where the water is, and then going home is just a matter of going up and up until you emerge from the woods. I was a bit concerned about getting lost at first because as an ex-city person, the forest at night is an experience of profound, total darkness that I’d never had before. It’s unsettling and lovely.
(Although the flash and the snow make things look deceptively luminous here.)
The cats usually retreat to the barn in the evening (as they’re supposed to—it’s their prime hunting hour and I want them to keep the hay rodent-free) but when they hear me walk past the barn after dark they’re like “yay we’re going on a walk tonight” and I see three cats jump out of the window one after the other and then follow me. It’s very cute. All four of us enjoy our night walks.
I love how many wild animals you can hear at night (and without Pandolf scaring them off), the forest feels so much more populated than during the day. And I love how lively cats are after sunset.
They spend the day sleeping on the couch or in my bed (depending on whether I’ve made a fire in the living-room) but then at night they keep chasing each other around, climbing on things, exploring, playing pranks on each other… Morille likes to hide (very poorly) behind trees or rocks and then pounce on me or the other cats when we walk past. She does it 12 times per walk and we pretend to be very startled every time to make her feel formidable.
« Here is something I’ve been made to understand: Using my phone and computer might feel like nothing more than the static of passing time, but all the micro-decisions I make as I search and swipe and scroll are secretly valuable commodities. Every time I touch a device, I leave a trail of digital DNA that can be used to reverse-engineer some version of me that is used to sell me things.
[… But] understanding myself as data requires a large measure of
abstraction, so when I think about how my data is used and by whom, I would say it makes me feel abstractly very bothered. Theoretically totally creeped out. […] Let me tell you what feels definitely and unbearably concrete: [someone] getting his paws on my phone and riffling through my tabs. My husband hopping on my computer because it’s close by, and he wants to “just check something really quick.” […] I don’t like to think of my relationship to technology as possessive, but the internal histaminic explosion I feel when someone else uses — or, if I’m being honest, even just touches
— my devices says otherwise. Despite my better knowledge, my devices still feel like private spaces.
One thing the era of big data teaches is that everyone has something to hide. […] There’s nothing on my phone or computer that could be considered even remotely indecent. [But] my phone and computer are repositories for the minutiae that swims through my stream of consciousness: what I wonder about, worry over, linger on. Curiosities I would have once called “idle,” fancies I’d dismiss as “passing” — it seems there’s no longer such a thing. As long as I have a device on hand to help me do nothing, I’m always at work in my inertia, mounting evidence of myself. […]
My blind-spots are witnessed by some algorithmic omniscience that
uses them to reconstitute me as a consumer. Weirdly, allowing a human being access to that same material feels somehow more uncomfortably intimate, even if I know it’s less harmful. Because knowing you’re being monitored is different than feeling seen. Differently put: I’m more willing to be exploited than I am to be judged. »
