Daily Nourishment for April 20, 2024: Words Seem to Possess a Mystic Quality
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 40 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 15 minutes
“I am not one of those who neglect the body in order to make of it a sacrificial offering for the soul, since my soul would thoroughly dislike being served in such a fashion.” - Rilke
Pause.
Set a timer for two minutes, close your eyes, and do a body scan. What hurts? What’s stiff? What sensations can you feel on your skin feel right now? How’s your breathing? Do you need to relax your shoulders? What else?
Prompt.
Read this quote by Virginia Woolf:
“In illness words seem to possess a mystic quality. We grasp what is beyond their surface meaning, gather instinctively this, that, and the other — a sound, a colour, here a stress, there a pause — which the poet, knowing words to be meagre in comparison with ideas, has strewn about his page to evoke, when collected, a state of mind which neither words can express nor the reason explain. Incomprehensibility has an enormous power over us in illness, more legitimately perhaps than the upright will allow. In health meaning has encroached upon sound. Our intelligence domineers over our senses. But in illness, with the police off duty, we creep beneath some obscure poem by Mallarmé or Donne, some phrase in Latin or Greek, and the words give out their scent and distil their flavour, and then, if at last we grasp the meaning, it is all the richer for having come to us sensually first, by way of the palate and the nostrils, like some queer odour.”
Practice.
Set a timer for 12 minutes and journal or take notes using the following questions as prompts:
—How do you inhabit hours and days differently when you’re sick?
—What are the worst things about being sick?
—What are the best things about being sick?
—How does being sick change how you engage with books, TV shows, music, etc?
—What do you remember about the last time you were sick?
—What have you forgotten about the last time you were sick?
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Use your notes to begin writing a new essay, story, poem, or letter if you like.
Want More?
Read On Being Ill by Virginia Woolf
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Upcoming Workshops & Gatherings
—Sunday, 4/21/2024: Thoughtful Readers Gathering with Anna Gazmarian
—This month’s Revision Stations Designed by Lauren Winner gathering will be on Saturday, April 27th from 10:15-noon CT.
If you have something that needs revision attention, you will not regret attending. Promise.
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Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Charlotte Donlon.
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