I got stuck on a phrase at MOMA’s “Exquisite Corpses: Drawings and Disfiguration.” It was used in a wall reference describing the rotund, planetary-like images of Hans Bellmer: “Accommodating and limitless docility.” Immediately I thought of the manatees milling around a warm water runoff spout at a Florida Power and Light Co. facilty that M, K and I liked to visit when we’d go south to stay with R & S, M’s parents. How drawn I was to the manatees. “Accommodating and limitless docility,” a state of mind where stress is as foreign as an iceberg in the Sahara. Rolling drifting looking but not seeing. Simply being sentient.
On Monday morning I’ll be looking to tap my inner manatee. I’ve trained in such a way that running – even for as long as three and a half hours – is the equivalent of rolling drifting looking but not seeing. Simply being sentient. Where there is no injury and no stress, there can be no pain. I have come to believe that I have done what I have set out to do and that is to be ready to run for hours. Not to race. But to be inside myself.
