I’ve been riding my stationary bike–not a Peloton, a Schwinn–and reading with my screen reader on the iPad while sweating copiously. Thoughts come unbidden and interrupt my reading. Endorphins cancel steady narratives much of the time and this is good.
I tend to read the driest stuff when working out, just so I can be fully miserable. I was reading David Hume when suddenly I was back in childhood sitting beside the first fireplace I remember. We had a pair of iron soldiers as andirons–“Hessians” my father said. And I used to get as close as I could to watch them in the midst of the fire. Being legally blind I had to get very close. Some adult, probably my Finnish grandmother, told me those Hessians were in Hell. Just a thought on my bike. My version of a workout video. Then back to David Hume.
“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others. To seek the real beauty, or real deformity, is as fruitless an enquiry, as to pretend to ascertain the real sweet or real bitter.”
Pump pump on the going nowhere bike.
Planet of the Blind 