I’d love to run today because it’s so beautiful outside, but I won’t. It’s my day to rest. My right hip is a bit sore and needs a break. And tomorrow is my 6 year runniversary and I’m planning to do my long run to mark the occasion.
This morning I worked a bit more on my sonnet about attention. I tried to stay truer to the Shakespearean form by using 10 syllables in each line. In one or two lines, I failed. Not sure if it’s really in iambic pentameter either.
ATTENTION
is the beginning of a devotion
which can be a form of daily prayer
that you undertake while you’re in motion
running in and through the outside air.
A prayer given with lungs and feet
to inspire the trees and absorb the earth
a letting go to a steady beat
desiring nothing but the rebirth
of an earnest and a loving belief
that has the power to break you open
and to spill out the terrible grief
caused by a decreased sense of hope and
increased apathy, a monstrous twinning.
To end, attention is the beginning.
What I’m Fascinated by, a list
- breathing/respiration as the process of inspiration (in) and expiration (out). I want to play with these some more.
- absorption: energy absorption + how Frédérick Gros describes it The Philosophy of Walking: “But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads (85)”.
- body prayer: how does the body pray? What is praying–the rituals and habits?
- Simone Weil and attention as prayer.