Riding to a Quiet Place

Purcell Park, Harrisonburg

Riding to a quiet place is a practice that offers much benefit. Currently I have a list of 12 places within Rockingham County where I often go to read, reflect and write, where I practice the ancient exercise of hupomnemata.* Leaving home, riding a bit and resting at some quiet place, I am able to recollect scattered logoi via the coupling of reading, writing and the placid space of a park or vista where I am all alone. With a lack of distractions disparate logos form choices and the art of living via composing, births thoughts that become part of the body for further integration, consolation and reactivation. 

* For a fuller text on this practice, see Michel Foucault, "Self Writing" translated from Corps écit no 5 (Feb. 1983): 3-23.

See "A Year of Adventure and Solitude"