The following podcast episode caught my attention with the title, “Are We Wrong About Bio Mechanics?” because I love learning all about the human body. But the content was an even more luscious surprise. The guest author spoke passionately and convincingly about fluidity and joyful movement, about remembering to think of our physical selves as collections and intersections of space and light, and about quantum physics. He described how babies move without regard for how they should move and just take joy in how they can move. He invited the listener to discover ways of moving in space with natural anti-gravity (buoyancy!) and with a freedom of spirit. I am paraphrasing here because I listened to this while running, and I definitely missed some detail. But it was so good I plan to listen again with a pen and notebook handy. Click here: https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=53881087&refid=asa
Although I finished Cold Mountain a few days ago, it won’t leave me. The story is big and historical, the setting and scenery beautiful despite being war torn, and the characters felt so real that despite a crisp and powerful epilogue I crave more of them. Ada and Ruby, especially, validate every yearning I have for our nine acres. So industrious! During my big downstairs artwork rearrange, I moved a small framed painting of a mountainside cabin to one of my kitchen walls. I want to see it often and conjure up the novel’s thrumming vibrations of reasonable struggle, resourcefulness, natural rhythms, and the beauty of creative labor. I want to think of friends living together.
“The main thing, Ruby said, was not to get ahead of yourself. Go at a rhythm that could be sustained on and on. Do just as much as you could do and still be able to get up and do it tomorrow. No more, no less.” ~Frazier
A well respected Oklahoma physician shared his thoughts on the mask debate in this letter to the governor. The government’s mandates or absence of mandates is one thing; the colossal accumulation of all citizens making good, wise, loving personal choices day after day is what will turn the virus’ tide in Oklahoma, and everywhere. Cellular level wisdom, this is what we need. https://nondoc.com/2020/07/18/letter-if-the-governor-wont-enforce-a-mask-requirement-the-task-falls-to-citizens/
Are you watching the new season of Yellowstone? Oh man. Much to say. Much. Many words.
“Just lose yourself in the work.”
Yesterday I cracked open Born to Run, a book I have been wanting to read for months. It chronicles the Tarahumara, a niche and extremely remote running tribe in the mountains of Mexico, and in just a few chapters I am hooked. My brother Joey read it a couple of months ago and warned me not to read it because it will make me want to run an ultra, ha! Then my foot doctor referenced it while we discussed unique physiology and barefoot running. All of this, then today i heard that gorgoeous, lilting message about fluid movement. Magic!
“There’s something so universal about that sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulses: fear and pleasure. We run when we’re scared, we run when we’re ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.” Also, “In terms of stress relief and sensual pleasure, running is what you have in your life before you have sex.”
One last thing, may I suggest as a perfect summertime meal a scoop of shrimp ceviche with cold watermelon and some salty tortilla chips? Okay. Not exactly foraged from the prairie, but delicious.
Seize the day, friend. Nourish yourself.
XOXOXOXO
Learn to rope