Gaston Bachelard... Who?

Unless you are French or happen to be a francophile, it would be a fairly safe bet that you don't know who Gaston Bachelard is? I didn't know who he was either until I came across his name in a book about Zen and the Art of Donkey Walking. Gaston Bachelard is quoted in this book as being 'the great philosopher of reverie'; a man who believes that without reverie in our lives, there is no well-being. Reverie in this context is not that of partying all night, having a stomping great headache the next morning and finding your body imprint in a bush outside your house. This reverie is more about finding tranquillity in a Chaotic World; finding a place and a space to breath and to be aware without tension, a place where we can experience lucid poetic moments. Garston Bachelard is talking here about the power of daydreaming, a naturally occurring state that pleases us because we have created it. Nightmares are the opposite of this state, as they are not of our making. The author of this book I'm reading uses Garston Bachelard's philosophy to back up his own thoughts about our preoccupation with keeping busy; 'Does anybody still daydream anymore? Are we too busy, too fearful to keep quiet? Who still enters into a restful intimacy with himself? Doing nothing nowadays means frustration, boredom, the need for facile stimulation, and TV gives it to you, follows you everywhere: in bars and cafes, in airports and gyms. You either watch it or make a call. Everybody is on the phone these days, making noise, fidgeting, lost in action, lost in speech. Reverie is a dying art, a lost alchemy of the four elements, and of the five senses. Our loss'. My running then, as defined in my earlier blog, 'Why do I run?', shows that all is not lost; reverie, restful intimacy and lucid poetic moments are all available to me when I just silently observe nature from within. You could run this way too, if you wanted to. You don't have to stop and stare, as the W.H. Davies poem Leisure suggests, just expand your consciousness and become an observer of the environment you are moving through. It's as simple as that. The book by the way is called The Wisdom of Donkeys by Andy Merrifield and published by Walker/Short Books 2008.