What's up? It's Major.

Today's episode is hosted by poet and slowdown producer Micah Kielbond.

Don't worry. I'll be back on November 25th.

I'm Micah Keelban.

And this is the slowdown.

I live on a hill on the edge of a valley.

I look out my window and watch cars creep by on the interstate that could take me a thousand miles to my birthplace if I so choose.

I watch trains pass by, the freight trains, the commuter rail, the Amtrak.

There's a river down there you can sort of see if you look closely at the right angle. I can see kids on the high school

soccer field blocks away and make out from far above the billboards that I often drive right by.

This slice of Los Angeles, the one I look out over every day, is odd to reconcile with the map

that I see on my phone. It feels disconnected from the

version I know on foot or by car, the one I experience when I'm down in the street.

Adding this third experience of the space has upended everything I thought I'd made sense of in my

mental map. So now, as I live in it, I try to find my own

authentic knowledge of the earth I see and the earth I feel, some melding of technologies

and body. I call this my little valley, but really that designation doesn't even fit with how the city was made to function.

The natural nearness is dissected by the infrastructure built to connect the city.

I can see out the window, a coffee shop that is half a mile away as the crow flies.

Google tells me it's a 10-minute drive there, but an hour's walk with the

available roads. To drive, I would have to take the highway. It's an urban planning gripe,

sure. And all you walkable city dwellers can tell me that if I'm going to be making these

...