There is much talk of air. To breathe in is literally in-spiration, and the theme of air fits with the theme of originality. Breath has numerous connotations, first and foremost that of creation: breath is the spirit which animates the clay of our bodies, as God breathes life into Adam in Genesis. Likewise, death is described in the Inuktitut language as “losing your breath.” Whitman was inspired by the Hindu mystics who wrote the Bhagavad Gita and there is a huge fixation in Hindu and Buddhist meditation on focusing on and regulating the breath as a cycle.
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