I found something very exciting to me. While looking for reading events for Walt Whitman’s birthday, May 31, I came across an overnight reading of “Song of Myself”. Ecstatic that I found a dedicated space to appreciate the great work, I booked it immediately. This is what I love. And the organization holding the event, even more surprising and life inducing. The place is called “The School of Attention” – a program dedicated to taking back the teaching of attention, in a world that is consumed and burdened by overstimulating and drowning media. As I explored further, I found that this is exactly what drives me: observation and connection to a world in front of us. The recording of what is front of the eyes apart from a screen. The appreciation of life and existence itself. And to think, a whole community dedicated to that. They quite literally have classes where you are retaught attentiveness, where you go outside and write what you observe and discuss the movement with others. I need this. I need to dive into this and see if it is as real as they are portraying it to be. This is just how I want to live my life. This is just how I preach to myself in the early morning, where the dawn is nearly awake. I hope to find something here, in myself and in others. A shared appreciation and value of the existence beyond us and the trivial matters galore.
How grand.
Place of Leaves 