The Best Part of Summer with an Offering from Catherine Ricketts
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 40 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 10-15 minutes
"We start in the stars and move to the womb, which is to say water, which is to say swimming, which is the best part of summer."-- Nina MacLauglin, "Summer Solstice"
Pause.
Set a timer for two minutes. Close your eyes and daydream.
Prompt.
MacLaughlin writes, "We enter water and we leave ourselves. Gravity loosens and we swim into a slow trance, we swim into wisdom. And what is the wisdom? It is of being un-separate. It is a temporary return to the unbroken planet, where we exist as both whole and dissolved." Freewrite for ten minutes about swimming.
Practice.
List ten places you dream of swimming.
Want More?
Listen to Loudon Wainwright's "The Swimming Song"
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Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Catherine Ricketts.
Catherine Ricketts is an essayist, songwriter, and writing instructor. Her nonfiction on the arts, grief, joy, and spirituality appears in the Kenyon Review Online, the Ploughshares blog, Electric Literature, The Christian Century, Image, The Millions, Paste, and the music blog for the NPR-affiliate WXPN. She studied writing at the University of Pennsylvania and holds an MFA in nonfiction from Seattle Pacific University. Her first book is The Mother Artist, a work of literary nonfiction on motherhood and artistic practice. Find her on Instagram at @bycatherinericketts, or stay in touch via her newsletter.
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