The Marginalian:

Each year on my birthday, I perform a “Whitman divination”: I conjure up the most restless question on my mind, open Leaves of Grass with my eyes closed, and let my blind finger fall on a verse; without fail, Whitman opens some profound side door to my question that becomes its own answer, one inaccessible to the analytical mind.

An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days

I’m 51 today! I tried the Whitman Divination in observance. I landed on “I Sing the Body Electric,” #9:

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems,
…
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only.
but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

This live–our lives–at once independent and subjective, yet connected, intersubjective. Individually and quietly navigated, yet concentric with each other.