Pleasure Arrives
A run, and prompts for your practice
Pleasure arrives with a glimpse of October — or rather, last week, with the sun.
It’s Thursday when this spark arrives, the one that unfurls internally and asks for movement and so I set out for a run. I run a few times a year, mostly it’s when the temperature is cool enough. Mostly, it’s when the weather is fair. An ember exists within, one laced with lingering hints of running, and some feeling tone that often asks for quickness. It is a match lit by life’s desires to be outside, along the friction of too much sitting.
It was after the work day, the sidewalks dried, the air not dampening. It was after the rain. The hum of the evening: trains exhale at metered lengths, tired passengers emerging. But there we were in the light of the sun.
I seek pleasure in these sun streets. Pleasure arrives in pockets of light, joy in sunsets like portals. I weave my way through the streets aligning with the bright light of the sun. It pours like honey, like a river, stretching over sidewalks, over basketball courts, over kids running and chasing after balls through the streets.
I ran that day in no particular order — except so that I can see the rays of the sun. This meant running the same streets over and over, looping and lapping again. I run really for no particular reason other than to move what needs to move through me in a way that writing or talking can’t. Some things just get stuck within us and I find the movement helps to set that free, and so I feel my feet on the earth, the pavement, feel the fast pace, lymph moving, lungs expand, heartbeat like a drumbeat inside like feet on the sidewalk humming again, again, again. I find pleasure in this process, and it’s nourishing.
Pleasure is a way of nourishing life; it’s a way of the enlivening of the senses. Olives, soft brioche with salmon eaten slowly in the street with chives and flakes of lemon skin, soap that smells like oranges. Pleasure is the sunlight in the sky after four days of rain, life gaining momentum from a fast pace of cool air and running and biking. Pleasure is feeling at home in prose, in the evenings, in the company of friends, in parks, in corner stores, in the presences of strangers, music sifting through leaves on oak trees winding its way through streets like the sun. Pleasure is brownstones, brick siding, green buildings, blue doors, morning walks, sunlight in the sky on fire with delight in the evening. Pleasure arrives repeatedly, and I breathe it in deeply. It reminds me that receiving it is a gift, not a guarantee, it is a practice. I look for it simply.
Pleasure is a space to savor, foundation, the starting place, the grounding place of practices. It can be agitating, sometimes, soothing, arousing, containing in others. It can be elusive, impractical, sometimes present. But pleasure is essential, and savoring it is a way of deepening our sense of life and our way of living. When we set the ground for our creative lives to unfold in a way that’s pleasing, we are far more likely to come back to it over time and to return again and again.
Later, after the run, in my journal, I open up a page and write, “pleasure is receiving what we need and parsing through, letting go of what’s no longer needed.” Pleasure can be adding in or letting go. It can be simple, arriving easy, complex, can be a place for breathing deeply, letting in, letting go, and expanding.
This week, as we arrive to October, write a list of what’s delighting you. Let it be a slow list, ongoing. Let it be a list of small things, and get granular. Write it out in a pocket journal, keep it in the notes section of your phone and tend to it throughout time. Feel into different types of delight in the process. What does it taste like? Sound like? Smell like? What are the textures? Use all your senses. Try it for a week, a month, a few days, then notice and see how it feels.
irl + online experiences:
October 5 | Bookbinding: Pamphlet Stitch
October 7 | Bookbinding: French Link Stitch
October 15 | Taste & Write: Meditating on the Senses
October 19 | Embodying the Artist: Creative Somatics
October 22 | Pleasure Portal: Writing for Aliveness + Feeling Good
October 26 | Build Your Journaling Practice
check out the experience calendar + shop the recording library for guided journaling sessions or email me to schedule your own.