Kierkegaard, 1843.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. Even if one were to walk for one’s health and it were constantly one station ahead—I would still say: Walk! Besides, it is also apparent that in walking one constantly gets as close to well-being as possible, even if one does not quite reach it but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Health and salvation can be found only in motion. If anyone denies that motion exists, I do as Diogenes did, I walk. If anyone denies that health resides in motion, then I walk away from all morbid objections. Thus, if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or (Reitzel Publishers, 1843)


More pictures from this morning’s walk: Time Lapse (another Wow) and Sunrise shots.

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

Start close in, 
don’t take the second step  
or the third, 
start with the first  thing  close in,  
the step 
you don’t want to take…

Do I have a first step I don’t want to take? …

What would it be, this step I don’t want to take?

— Jillian Horton, We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine and Healing. Poem by David Whyte: “Start Close In


Image: Carolina Pimenta, Arts Center, Riberia Grande, Portugal (via Unsplash)

It’s been a long day

That night on the show, there’s an expert giving advice about how to survive disasters, natural and man-made. He says it’s a myth that people panic in emergencies. Eighty percent just freeze. The brain refuses to take in what is happening. This is called the incredulity response. “Those who live move,” he says.

~ Jenny Offill, Weather: A Novel (Knopf, February 11, 2020)


Notes:  Photo: Nirav Patel.  Related Posts: It’s been a long day

It’s been a long day


Notes:

I feel fine, anytime she’s around me now

I always wanted to be the kind of woman James Taylor would sing: I feel fine, anytime she’s around me now to“Something in the Way She Moves.” You know that song.

Don’t you wish someone wanted to sing that song to you?

~ Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water: A Memoir