On Circulation

To stay in motion is the whole instruction.

Inside these walls that means going against inertia before inertia goes against you. Get up before you feel like it. Walk the track. Drink the water. Find the window with actual air in it and stand there until your lungs remember what they’re for.

Women who stop moving disappear first.

I don’t mean physically. I mean the ones who lie in their bunks under sweatshirt eye masks while the fans hum and the TVs run and time goes somewhere but not forward. Octavio Paz called it killing time. Here, killing time and killing life are the same motion.

My practice since I arrived: get up, kneel and pray, write, yoga, meditate, a little cardio, a little fresh air, be of service.

The pressure either crushes you or makes the diamond.

The difference is circulation.