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September 2001
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
YEAR 3 BEGINS
Hope everyone had a pleasant summer...and that all have a good year ahead.
Woe is me. I pressed some computer key and lost my Drippings email list
and have tried to reconstruct it, with partial success. Welcome to those
new on the list. How did you get on it? Don't ask. Send me your preferred
email address. I am sending everyone two emails. One with the complete
Drippings so far ( v. I & v. II). The second email will be the Sept. 2001
installment. And please do send me the email addresses of those whom you
think would also enjoy these Drippings.
Best wishes,
Bill Schechter
The Lord High Excerptor
***************
All of the these and previous excepts appear amongÐ and spring
fromÐroutine but careful observations such as: "The ants appear to
be gone
into winter quarters. Here are two bushels of fine gravel, piled up in a
cone. overpowering the grass, which tells of a corresponding cavity."
***************
[Year and date cited for first passage is same for all unless otherwise
indicated]
***************
It is a rare qualification be able to state a fact simple and adequately,
to digest some experience cleanly, to say "yes" and "no"
with authority,
to conceive and suffer the truth to pass through us living and intact,
even as a waterfowl an eel, as it flies over the meadows, thus stocking
new waters. First of all, man must see before he can say. Statements are
made but partially. They are said with reference to certain conventions or
existing institutions, not absolutely. A fact truly and absolutely stated
is taken out of the region of common sense and acquires a mythologic or
universal significance. Save it and have done with it. Express it without
expressing yourself. See not with the eyes of science which is barren, nor
of youthful poetry which is impotent. But taste the world and digest
it...And you see, so at length you say. (Nov 1, 1851).
**********
In your thoughts no more than in your walks do you meet men.
**********
This is on my way to Conantum, 2:30 p.m. It is a bright, clear, warm Nov.
day. I feel blessed. I love my life. I warm toward all nature.
***********
I see so far and distinctively, my eyes seem to slide in clear air.
***********
Dear to me to lie in this sand, fit to preserve the bones of a race for
thousands of years to come. And this is my home, my native soil; and I am
a New Englander...Here I have my habitat. I am of thee. (Nov. 7)
***********
I too would fain set down something besides facts. Facts should only be as
the frame to my pictures; they should be material to the mythology I am
writing; not facts to assist men to make money, farmers to farm,
profitably in any sense; facts to tell who I am and where I have been and
what I have thought. My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I
too cherish vague and misty forms, vaguest when the cloud at which I stare
is dissipated quite, and naught but the skyey depths are seen. (Nov. 9)
***********
It is fatal to a writer to be too much possessed by his thought. Things
must lie a little remote to be described. (Nov. 11)
***********
Write often, write upon a thousand themes, rather than long at a time, not
trying to turn too many somersaults in the air and so come down on your
head at last....Those sentences are good and well-discharged that are like
so many resiliencies from the spring floor of our life, a distinct fruit
and kernel itself, springing from the Terra Firma...Take as many bounds in
a day as possible. Sentences uttered with your back to the wall. There are
the admirable bounds when the performer has lately touched the
springboard. A good bound into the air from the air is a wholesome
experience...Such, uttered or not, is the strain of your sentence.
Sentences in which there are no strain. (Nov. 12)
***********
A cold and dark afternoon, the sun being behind clouds in the west. The
landscape is barren of objects. The trees being leafless, and so little
life in the sky for variety. Such a day as will almost oblige a man to eat
his own heart. A day in which you must hold onto life by the teeth...Now
is the time to cut timber for yokes...Finding yourself yoked to Matter &
Time. Truly a hard day, hard times, these!...What do the thoughts find to
live on? What avails you now the fire you stole from the heavens?...All
fields lie fallow. Shall not your mind? ...[B]ut there are brave thoughts
within you that shall remain to rustle through the winter like oak leaves
on your boughs ...Some warm springs shall still tinkle and fume...Methinks
man came very near being a dormant creature, just as some of these
animals...Now for the oily nuts which you have stored up. (Nov. 13)
***********
It is remarkable that the highest intellectual mood which the world
tolerates is the perception of the truth of the most ancient revelations,
now in some respects out-of-date; but any direct revelation, any original
thoughts, it hates like virtue. The fathers and mothers would rather hear
the young man or young women at their table express reference for some old
statement of the truth than utter a direct revelation themselves. They
don't want to have any prophets born in their familyÐdamn them!
(Nov. 16)
***********
I rejoice that there are owls. They represent the stark, twilight,
unsatisfied thoughts I have. Let owls do the idiotic and maniacal hooting
for men. (Nov. 18)
******************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. III, No. 2
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
October 2000
I wished to ally myself to the power that rules the universe. I wished to
dive into some deep stream of thoughtful and devoted life, which meandered
through retired and fertile meadows...I wished to do again, or for
once,things quite congenial to my highest in-most and sacred nature...I
wished to live, ah! as far away as a man can think. I wished for leisure
and quiet to let my life flow in its proper channels, with its proper
currents; when I might not waste the days; might do my own work and not
the work of
Concord and Carlisle. [Dec 12, 1851]
*****************
We do indeed see through and through each other, through the veil of the
body, and see the real form and character in spite of the garment...How
nakedly men appear to us! [Dec 13]
*****************
Improve every opportunity to express yourself in writing, as if it were
your last. [Dec 17]
*****************
One of the best men I know often offends me by uttering made
words...Oh,would you be but simple and downright! Would you but cease your
palaver!...Repeating himself....Shampooing himself. The conversation of
gentlemen after dinner! [same]
****** **********
Nothing stands more free from blame in this world than a pine tree. [Dec.
20]
****************
After expressing regret than some of his friends might not find him
affectionate or supportive enough: "But let me say, frankly that, at
the
same time, I feel...that I am under an awful necessity to be what I am."
[Dec 21]
****************
I standing twenty miles off, see a crimson cloud on the horizon on the
horizon. You tell me it is a mass of vapor which absorbs all other rays
and reflects the red, but that is nothing to the purpose, for this red
vision excites me, stirs my blood, make my thought flow and I have new and
indescribable fantasies and you have not touched the secret of that
influence. If there is not something mystical in your explanation,
something unexplainable to the understanding of some elements of mystery,
it is quite insufficient. If there is nothing in it which speaks to my
imagination, what boots it? What sort of science in it which enriches the
understanding, but robs the imagination? ...If we should know all things
thus mechanically merely, should we know anything really? [Dec 25]
**************
The man is blessed who everyday is permitted to behold anything so pure
and serene as the western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the world.
[Dec 27]
**************
On the January thaw: "It feels warm as in summer; you sit on the
fence-rail and vegetate in the sun, and realize that the earth may produce
peas again." [Dec. 29]
*************
On seeing a great tree cut down: " And the space it occupied in the
upper
air is vacant for the next two centuries. It is lumber. He has laid waste
the air...Why does not the village bell sound a knell? I hear no knell
tolled." [Dec 30]
***************
Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces.
Consider not what they did, but what they intended. [Dec. 31]
***************
In the light of strong feeling, all things take their places, and truth of
every kind is seen for such. [Jan 1, 1852]
**************
The worst kind of tick to get under your skin is yourself in an irritable
mood. [Same]
*****************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. III, No. 3
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
November 2001
**********************
His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I
think they were not meant to be read. I alone might read them
intelligently. To most others they would only give false
impressions. I have never been able to understand what he
meant by his life. Why did he care so much about being a writer?
Why did he pay so much attention to his own thoughts? Why
was he so dissatisfied with everyone else, etc? Why was he so
much interested in the river and the woods and the sky, etc?
Something peculiar, I judge.
- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's
**********************
What need to travel? There are no sierra equal to the clouds in the sunset
sky. (Jan 11, 1852)
************
....But swiftly the thought comes to me; go not so far out of your way for
a true life; keep strictly onward on that path alone which your genius
points out. (Jan 12)
************
With respect to writing : "The arrow had best not be loosely shot. The
most transient and passing remark must be reconsidered by a writer, made
sure and warranted, as if the earth had rested on its axle to back it, and
all the natural forces lay behind it. The writer must direct his sentences
as carefully and leisurely as the marksmen his rifle, who shoots sitting,
and with a rest, with patent sights...He must not merely seem to speak the
truth. He must really speak it. If you foresee that part of your essay
will topple down after a lapse of time, throw it down yourself. (Jan. 26)
************
Obey the spur of the moment. These accumulated it is that makes the
impulse and and impetus of the life of genius...Let the spurs of countless
moments goad us incessantly into life. I feel the
spur of the moment thrust deep into my side. (Same)
************
Let all things give way to expression. It is the bud unfolding...Who shall
resist the thaw? (Same)
************
What if all the ponds were shallow? Would it not react on the minds of men
if there were no physical deeps. I thank God that he made the pond deep
and pure for a symbol. (Same)
************
Nature never indulges in exclamations, never says 'ah' or 'alas." She
is
not of French descent. She is a plain writer, uses few gestures, does not
add to her verbs, uses few adverbs, uses no expletives. I find I use many
words for the sake of emphasis which really add nothing to the force of my
sentences, and they look relieved the moment I have canceled these. [These
are] words by which I express my mood, my conviction, than the simple
truth. (Same)
************
If you mean by hard times, not when there is no bread, but when there is
no cake, I have no sympathy with you...They showed me Johnny Riordan
today....This little mass of humanity, this tender goblet for the fates,
cast into a cold world with a torn lichen leaf around himÐOh I should
rather hear that America's first born were all slain than that his little
fingers and toes should feel cold while I am warm. (Jan 28)
************
Perhaps those mother o' pearl clouds I described some time ago might be
called rainbow flocks. (Jan 29)
************
I am afraid to travel much or to famous places lest it completely
dissipate the mind. Then I am sure that what we observe at home, if we
observe anything, is of more importance that what we observe abroad....A
wakeful night will yield as much thought as a long journey. (Jan 30)
************
I am a commoner. To me there is something devilish in manners. The best
manners is nakedness of manners. (Jan 31)
************
It depends how a man has spent his day whether he has any right to be in
his bed. (Feb 1)
************
I will resign my life sooner than live by luck. (Same)
************
I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its
beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains. (Feb.
5)
************
I found that the shanty was warmed by the simple social relations of the
Irish...What if there is less fire on the hearth if there is more in the
heart. (Feb 8)
**************
If you wish to get a copy of the complete "Journal Dripping" to date,
just email me at bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
*********************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. III, No. 4
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
December 2001
**********************
His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I
think they were not meant to be read. I alone might read them
intelligently. To most others they would only give false
impressions. I have never been able to understand what he
meant by his life. Why did he care so much about being a writer?
Why did he pay so much attention to his own thoughts? Why
was he so dissatisfied with everyone else, etc? Why was he so
much interested in the river and the woods and the sky, etc?
Something peculiar, I judge.
- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's
**********************
Write while the heat is in you...the writer who postpones the recording of
his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled [too much] to burn a hole with.
He cannot inflame the mind of his audience. (February 10, 1852)
************
As we grow older, is it not ominous that we have more to write about
evening, less about morning. We must associate more with the morning hours.
(Feb. 26)
***********
If rivers come out of their icy prisons thus bright, shall I not too resume
by Spring life with joy, sparkle, and hope? ( Same)
***********
I have faith that the man who redeemed some acres of land the past summer
redeemed also some parts of his character. I shall not expect to find him
ever in the almshouse or prison. He is, in fact, so far on his way to to
heaven. (March 1, 1852)
***********
When I hear the telegraph harp, I think I must read the Greek poets. The
sound is like a brighter color....It is prophecies finer senses, a finer
life, a golden age. It is the poetry of the railroad, the heroic and poetic
thoughts which the Irish laborers had of their toil now get expression.
(March 9)
***********
The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time I ceased to
sing? My groves are invaded.
***********
Before sunrise...with what infinite and unwearied expectation and
proclamation the cocks usher in every dawn as if there had never been one
before. . And the dog barks still and the thallus of lichens spings, so
tenacious of life is nature. (March 16)
***********
It is necessary to find out exactly what books to read on a given subject.
Thought there be 1000 books written upon it, it is only important to read 3
or 4 ; they well contain all that is essential, and few pages will show
which they are. Books which are books are all you want, and there are but
half a dozen in any thousand...Decayed literature makes the richest of all
soils.
(Same)
***********
I catch myself philosophizing most abstractly when returning to
consciousness in the night or morning. I make the truest observations and
distinctions then, when the will is yet wholly asleep, and the mind works
like a machine without friction. I am conscious of having, in my sleep,
transcended the limits of individual and made observations and carried on
conversations which in my waking hours I can neither appreciate or recall.
As if in sleep our individual fell into the infinite mind, and at the
moment of awakening we find ourselves on the confines of the
latter....There is a moment in the dawn when the darkness of night is
dissipated and before the exaltation of the day commences to rise, when we
see things more truly, since our senses are purer...By afternoon, all
objects are seen in mirage.
(March 17)
***********
It would be worth the while to tell why a swamp pleases us...Why the
moaning of a storm gives us pleasure. Methinks it is because it puts to
rout the trivialness of our fair weather life and gives it at least a
tragic interest...It is musical and thrilling like the sound of an enemy's
bugle...What would the the days, what would our life be worth if some
nights were not dark as pitchÐ-of darkness tangible or that you can cut
with a knife. How else could the light in the mind shine? How could we be
conscious of the light of reason? If it were not for physical cold, how
should we have discovered the warmth of the affections? (March 31)
***********
Do they [the sparrows] go to lead heroic lives in Rupert Island? They are
so small. I think their destinies must be large...God did not make this
world in jest; no, nor in indifference. These migrating sparrows all bear
messages that concern my life. (Same)
***********
What philosopher can estimate the different values of a waking thought or a
dream? (Same).
***********
[If you wish to get a copy of the complete "Journal Dripping" to
date,
just email me at bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
****************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. III, No. 5
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
January 2002
**********************
"Of all the strange and accountable things,
this journalizing is the strangest"
ÐHDT
**********
I go forth to to make new demands on life. I wish to begin this summer
well; to do something in it worthy of it and me; to transcend my daily
routine and that of my townsmen; to have my immortality now, that it be
in the quality of my daily life...I will give all I am for my nobility.
I will pay all my days for my success. I pray that the life of this
spring and summer may ever lie fair in my memory. May I dare as I have
never done! May I persevere as I have never done...May my melody not be
wanting for this season. May I gird myself to be a hunter of the
beautiful, that naught escape me...I am eager to report the glories of
the universe, may I be worthy to do it (March 15,1852)
*******
I hear tonight the unspeakable rain, mingled with rattling snow against
the windows, preparing the ground for spring. ( (March 31)
*******
How unexpectedly dumb and poor and cold does Nature look, when, where we
had expected to find a glassy lake reflecting the skies and trees in the
spring, we find only dull, white ice. Such I am, no doubt, to many
friends. (April 1)
*******
The poet says the proper study of of mankind is man. I say, study to
forget all of that; take wider views of the universe...I would fain let
man go by and behold a universe in which man is but a grain of sand...
What is the village, city, state, nation, aye the civilized world, that
it should concern a man so much? The thought of them affects me in my
wisest hours as when I pass a woodchucks hole...It is a test I would
give my companionÐ can he forget man? I do not value any view of the
universe in which man and the institutions of man enter very
largely...Man is but the place where I stand and the prospect hence is
infinite...The universe is larger than enough for man's abode. Some
rarely go outdoors, most are always at home at night, very few indeed
have stayed out all night once in their lives, fewer still have gone
behind the world of humanity, see its institutions like toadstools by
the wayside. (Same)
*******
How novel and original must be each new man's view of the universe!
for
though the world is so old, and so many books have been written, each
object appears wholly undescribed to our experience, each field of
thought wholly unexplored...The end of the world is not yet. (Same)
*******
The rain was soothing. so still and sober, gently beating against and
amusing our thoughts, swelling the brooks...The hour is favorable to
thought. (Same)
*******
The bluebird carries the sky on his back. (April 3)
*******
What a grand incident of the nightÐthough hardly a night passes without
suchÐthat between the hours of nine and ten a battalion of of downy
clouds many miles in length and several in width were observed sailing
noiselessly like a fleet, from north to south over land and water, at a
height of a half dozen miles above the earth! Over woods and over
villages they swept along, intercepting the light of the moon , and yet
perchance no man observed them. Now they are all gone. (April 3)
*******
Ducks: " They are like rolling pins with wings." (April 10)
*******
On spring: "For a month past, life has been incredible to me. None but
kind god's can make me sane. If only they will let their south winds
blow on me! I ask to be melted." (April 11)
*******
Ah! When a man has travelled and robbed the horizon of his native fields
of its mystery and poetry, its indefinite promise, tarnished the blue of
distant mountains with his feet! When he has done this, he may begin to
think of another world. What is this longer to him? (Same)
*******
Looking at the river: "Every object seemed rhymed by reflection." (Same)
*******
Walden was my forest walk. (Same)
*******
His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I
think they were not meant to be read. I alone might read them
intelligently. To most others they would only give false
impressions. I have never been able to understand what he
meant by his life. Why did he care so much about being a writer?
Why did he pay so much attention to his own thoughts? Why
was he so dissatisfied with everyone else, etc? Why was he so
much interested in the river and the woods and the sky, etc?
Something peculiar, I judge.
- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's
***********
If you wish to get a copy of the complete "Journal Dripping" to date,
just email me at bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
*************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. III, No. 6
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
February 2002
The robin is the only bird as yet that makes a business of singing,
steadily singing-Ðsinging continuously out of pure joy and melody of
soul... (April 13, 1852)
**************
On the beauty of our rivers: "There is just stream enough for a flow
of
thought; that
is all." (April 16)
**************
I am serene and satisfied when when the birds fly and the fish swim as
in a fable, for the moral is not far off...when the events of the day
have a mythological character, and the most trivial is symbolical.
(April 18)
**************
For the first time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle...It
is drawn with a firm line. Every incident is a parable of the Great
Teacher...Why should these sights and sound surround our life? Why
should I hear the chattering of blackbirds? Why smell the skunk each
year? I would fain explore the mysterious relation between myself and
these things. I would at least know what these things unavoidably are,
make a chart of our life, know how its shores trend, that butterflies
reappear and when, know why just this circle of of creatures completes
the world. Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature,
make a day to bring something forth new? (Same)
**************
That oak by Derby's is a grand object, seen from any side. It stands
like an athlete and defies the tempests in every direction. It has not a
weak point. It is an agony of strength. Its branches look like
stereotyped grey lightening on the sky. But I fear a price is set upon
its sturdy trunks and roots for ship-timber, for knees to make stiff the
sides of ships against Atlantic billows. Like an athlete, it shows its
well-developed muscles. (April 19)
**************
How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact, suggesting what
worlds remain to be unveiled. I think no man ever detects a principle
without experiencing an inexpressible and quite infinite and sane
pleasure, which advertises him of the pleasure of that truth he has
perceived. (Same)
**************
On the the turning of leaves red: "It is a natural magic. These little
leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world. At the
sight of any redness, I am excited like a cow." (Same)
**************
After finding shelter in a haybarn in the midst of a storm: " Oh what
reams of thought one might have here! The crackling of the hay makes
silence audible. It is so deep a bed, it makes one dream to sit on it,
to think of it." (Same)
**************
During a three day storm: "I hear a robin singing cheerily from some
perch in the wood, in the midst of the rain, where the scenery is now
wild and dreary. His song is a singular antagonism and offset to the
storm. As if Nature said. ÔHave faith, these two things I can do.'
It
sings with power, like a bird of great faith that sees the bight future
through the dark present, to reassure the race of men...They are sound
to make a dying man live. They sing not their despair. It is a pure
immortal melody." (April 21)
**************
After the storm clears: "I see a white pine dimly in the horizon, just
north of Lee's field. I hear a robin sing. Each enhances the other. The
tree seems the emblem of my life; it stands for the west, the wild. The
sight of it is grateful to me as to a bird whose perch it is to be at
the end of a weary flight. I am not sure whether the music I hear is
most in the robin's song or in its boughs." (Same)
**************
I know of two species of men. The vast majority are men of society. They
live on the surface...They are interested in the transient and fleeting,
they are like driftwood on the flood. They ask forever and only the
news, the froth, and scum of the eternal sea...Wealth and the
approbation of men is to them success...That which interests a town or
city or any large numbers of men is always something trivial, as
politics. It is impossible to be interested in what interests men
generally. Their pursuits and interests seem to me trivial. (April 23)
**************
What different tints of blue in the same sky! It requires to be parted
by white clouds that the delicacy and depth of each part may appear.
Beyond a narrow wisp or feather of mist, how different the sky!
Sometimes it is full of light, especially toward the horizon. The sky is
never seen to be of so deep and delicate a blue as when it is seen
between downy clouds (April 25)
**************
The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to
do
something. (April 29)
**************
END OF VOLUME II OF THE JOURNAL
**************
"Of all the strange and accountable things,
this journalizing is the strangest"
ÐHDT
*******
His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I
think they were not meant to be read. I alone might read them
intelligently. To most others they would only give false
impressions. I have never been able to understand what he
meant by his life. Why did he care so much about being a writer?
Why did he pay so much attention to his own thoughts? Why
was he so dissatisfied with everyone else, etc? Why was he so
much interested in the river and the woods and the sky, etc?
Something peculiar, I judge.
- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's
***********
If you wish to get a copy of the complete "Journal Drippings" to
date,
just email me at bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. III, No. 7
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
March 2002
Why should pensiveness be a kin to sadness? There is a certain fertile
sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is
positively joyful to me. It saves my life from being trivial. My life
flows with a deeper current. (August 17, 1851)
*******************
To shave all of the fields and meadows of New England clean! If men did
this but once, we would never hear the last of that labor...Mexico was won
with less exertion and less true valor than are required to do one
season's haying in New England...Every field is a battlefield to the
mower
Ða pitched battled too. (Same)
*********************
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Me
thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to
flow...The writing which consists with habitual sitting is mechanical,
wooden, dull to read (August 19)
***************
What if a man were earnestly and widely to set about recollecting and
preserving the thoughts which he has had? How many perchance are
unrecoverable! (Same).
********************
I fear that the character of my knowledge is from year to year becoming
more distinct and scientific, that in exchange for views as wide as
heaven's cope, I am being narrowed down to the field of a microscope.
I
see details, not wholes, not the shadow of the whole. I count parts and
say, "I know." (Same)
******************
We are armed with language to describe each leaf in the field...but not to
describe a human character. With equally wonderful indistinctness and
confusion, we describe men. (August 20)
*********************
That certainly is the best government where the inhabitants are least
often reminded of the government (Where a man cannot be a poet even
without danger of being made a Poet-Laureate! When he cannot be healthily
neglected, and grow up a man, and not an Englishman merely!) (August 21)
************************
The intellect of most men is barren....They neither fertilize or are
fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with nature that gives birth to
imagination. (Same)
*************************
It is the fault of some excellent writers...that they express themselves
with too great fullness and detail..They say all they mean. Their
sentences are not concentrated and nutty. Sentences which suggest far more
than they say, which have an atmosphere about them, which do not merely
report an old, but make a new impression; sentences which suggest as many
things and are as durable as a Roman Aqueduct; to frame these, that is the
art of writing. (August 22)
************************
Do not neglect to speak of men's low life and affairs with sympathy
....Resolve to read no book, to take no walk, to understand no enterprise,
but such as you can endure to give an account of to yourself. Live thus
deliberately for the most part. (August 23)
**************************
With what sober joy I stand to let the water drip from me and feel my
fresh vigor, who have been bathing in the same tub as the muskrat! Such a
medicated bath as only nature furnishes...How ample and generous was
nature. My inheritance is not narrow!
******************************
How can man sacrifice to supper this serene and sacred time. Our customs
turn the hour of sunset to a trivial time...It might be well if our
repasts were taken out of doors, in view of the sunset and the rising
starsÐ...if with our bread and butter, we took a slice of the red western
sky. (Same)
**************
"Of all the strange and accountable things,
this journalizing is the strangest"
ÐHDT
*******
His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I
think they were not meant to be read. I alone might read them
intelligently. To most others they would only give false
impressions. I have never been able to understand what he
meant by his life. Why did he care so much about being a writer?
Why did he pay so much attention to his own thoughts? Why
was he so dissatisfied with everyone else, etc? Why was he so
much interested in the river and the woods and the sky, etc?
Something peculiar, I judge.
- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's
***********
If you wish to get a copy of the complete "Journal Drippings" to
date,
just email me at bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
*******************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. III, No. 8
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
April 2002
One man lies in his words and gets a bad reputation; another lies in his
manners and enjoys a good one. (June 24, 1852)
*************
As candles are lit on earth, stars are lit in the heavens. (Same)
*************
I have not put darkness, duskiness enough into my night and moonlight
walks....The particular dusky serenity of the sentences must not allow the
reader to forget that it is evening or night, without my saying it is
dark. (June 26)
*************
Nature says: "You behold the utmost of what I do." (Same)
*************
All things, both beautiful and ugly, agreeable and offensive, are
expressed in flowersÐall kinds and degrees of beauty and all kinds of
foulness...Each human being has his flower which expresses his character.
In them nothing is concealed, but everything is published.(Same)
*************
Is there not always, when an arch is constructed, a latent reference to
its beauty? The arch supports itself, like the stars, by gravityÐ by
always fallings, never falls. But it should not be by their architecture
but by their abstract thoughts that a nation should seem to commemorate
itself. ...Methinks there are few specimens of architecture so perfect as
a verse of poetry. To what end, pray, is so much stone hammered?...One
sensible act will be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. I
love better to see stones in place...All the stone a nation hammers goes
only to its tomb. It buries itself alive. They are too exquisitely
cultured...Their life lacks reality. ( Same)
*************
In my experience nothing is so opposed to poetryÐnot crimeÐas business.
It
is a negation of life.
(June 29)
*************
A young man is Sudbury told me that he had heard woodchucks whistle.
(July 1)
*************
Last night, as I lay awake, I dreamed of the muddy and weedy river which I
had been paddling., and I seemed to drive some vigor from by day's
experience, like the lilies which have their roots at the bottom. (July 2)
*************
I have not seen a violet for some time. (Same)
*************
So floats the Musketequid over its section of the sphere. (July 3)
*************
Some birds are poets and sing all summer. (July 5)
*************
On eating fresh berries in the summertime: "After I had been eating
these
simple, wholesome, ambrosial fruits on this high hillside, I found my
senses whetted. I was young again and whether I stood or sat I was not the
same creature. (July 11)
*************
A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your
ecstasy. (July 13)
*************
A writer who does not speak out of experience uses torpid words, wooden or
lifeless words, such words as "humanitary," which have a paralysis
in
their tails. (July 14)
*************
Is it not more attractive to be a sailor than a farmer? The farmer's
son
is restless to go to sea... You may go round the world before the mast but
not behind the plow. (Same)
*************
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or
perchance a palace or temple on earth, and at last the middle aged man
concludes to build a woodshed with them. (same)
*************
No one has very put into words what the odor of water lilies expresses. A
sweet, innocent purity. (July 18)
*************
Through all these Sudbury [river] meadows, it is a perfect meander where
no wind will serve the sailor long. (Same)
*************
Every man says his dog will not touch you. Look out, nonetheless. (July 23)
*************
I sympathize with a weed perhaps more than the crop they choke; they
express so much vigor. (Same)
*************
If I choose to devote myself to labors that yield real profit, though
little money, they regard me as a loafer...I prefer to finish my education
at a different school. (Same)
*************
How often men will betray their sense of guilt and hence their actual
guilt by their excuses, where no guilt necessarily was (Same)
*************
The battalions of the fog are continually on the move. (July 25)
************
"Of all the strange and accountable things,
this journalizing is the strangest"
ÐHDT
*******
His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I
think they were not meant to be read. I alone might read them
intelligently. To most others they would only give false
impressions. I have never been able to understand what he
meant by his life. Why did he care so much about being a writer?
Why did he pay so much attention to his own thoughts? Why
was he so dissatisfied with everyone else, etc? Why was he so
much interested in the river and the woods and the sky, etc?
Something peculiar, I judge.
- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's
***********
If you wish to get a copy of the complete "Journal Drippings" to
date,
just email me at bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
*****************************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. III, No. 9
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
May 2002
~These are the final drippings for this year.
Best wishes to all for a healthy and happy summer.
Next year, the adventure continues, as we continue to climb,
crawl, and bushwack through the mind of HDT.~
*
The river is silvery, as it were plated and polished smoothly with the
slightly possible tinge of gold tonight. How beautiful the meanders of the
river, thus revealed. How beautiful the hills and vales, the whole surface
of these great cups, falling water from from dry or rocky edges
to gelid green fields and water in the midst where night is already
setting in! (July 27, 1852)
****************
I should like to ask the assessors what is the value of that blue mountain
range in the northwest horizon to Concord, and see if they would laugh, or
seriously set about calculating it. How poor, comparatively, should we be
without it. It would be descending to the scale of the merchant to say
it's worth its weight in gold. The privilege of beholding it, as an
ornament, a suggestion, a provocation, a heaven on earth. If I were one of
the fathers of the town I would not sell this right, which we now enjoy
for all the material wealth and prosperity conceivable. If need were, we
would rather all go down together. (Same)
****************.
What a different aspect will courage put on the face of things.
(August 3, 1852)
****************
(On describing a Ôsplendid rainbow'): "It is too remarkable
to be remarked
on." (Same)
****************
The rainbow after all does not attract an attention proportionate to its
singularity and beauty...It is a phenomenon aside from the common course
of nature....Too distinctly a sign or symbol of something to be
disregarded. What form of beauty could be imagined more strikingly
conspicuous. An arch of the the most brilliant and glorious colors
completely spanning the heavens before the eyes of man! Children look at
it. It is wonderful that all men do not take pains to behold it. At some
waterfalls it is permanent, as long as the sun shines. Plainly thus does
the Maker of the Universe set the seal to his covenant with men....All men
beholding it begin to understand the Greek epithet applied to the
worldÐname for the worldÐKosmos, or beauty. It was designed to impress
man. We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower. (April 6)
****************
Regarding flowers found near a brook: "Many flowers, of course, like
the
last, are prominent, if you visit such scenes as these, though one who
confines himself to the road may never see them." (Same)
****************
What is the plant at the brook with hairy undersides, now budded? (Same)
****************
If I were to choose a time for a friend to make a passing visit to this
world for the first time, in the full possession of his faculties,
perchance it would be at a moment when the sun is setting with splendor in
the west, his light reflected far and wide through the clarified air after
a rain, and a brilliant rainbow, as now, over arching the eastern
sky....If a man travelling from world to world were to pass through this
world at such a moment, would he not be tempted to take up his abode here?
(April 7)
****************
We see the rainbow apparently when we are on the edge of rain, just as the
sun is setting. If we are too deep in the rain, then it will appear dim.
Sometimes it is so near that I see a portion of its arch, this side of the
woods in the horizon, tinging them. Sometimes we are completely within it,
enveloped by it, and experience the realization of the child's wish.
The
obvious colors are red and green. Why green? It is astonishing how
brilliant the red may be. What is the difference between that red and the
red of the evening sky? Who does not feel that here is a phenomenon which
natural philosophy is alone unable to explain. The use of the rainbow, who
has described it? (Same)
****************
The whole surface of the earth is now streaked by fog over meadow and
forest alternating...A dewy cob-webbed morning. You observe the geometry
of cobwebs though most are of that gossamer character, close-woven, as if
a fairy had dropped her veil on the grass in the night. (August 8)
****************
Men have perchance, detected every kind of flower that grows in this
township, have pursued it with children's eyes, into the thickets and
darkest woods and swamps, where the painter's colors have betrayed it.
Have they with proportionate thoroughness plucked every flower of
thought which it is possible for man to entertain, proved every sentiment
which it is possible for man to entertain here? Men have circumnavigated
this globe of land and water, but how few have sailed out of sight of
common sense over the ocean of knowledge? (Same)
****************
The entertaining of a single thought of a certain elevation makes all men
of one religion. It is always some base alloy that creates the distinction
of sects. (Same)
****************
I only know myself as a human entity, the scene, so to speak, of thoughts
and affections, and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I stand
as remote from myself as another. However intense my experience, I am
conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of
me which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no
experience, but taking note of it...When the playÐit my be the tragedy of
lifeÐ is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a
work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. (Same)
****************
The coloring and reddening of leaves toward fall is interesting, as if the
sun had so prevailed that even leaves, better late than never, were
turning to flowers (August 21)
****************
Now I sit on the cliffs and look abroad over the river....I live so much
in my habitual thoughts...that I forget there is an outside to the globe
and am surprised when I behold it as nowÐ yonder hills and moonlight in
the river....Yet it is salutary to deal with the surface of thingsÐWhat
are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics which my eyes behold?
There is something invigorating in this air....I look out my eyes . I come
to my window and breathe the fresh air. It is a fact equally glorious with
the most inward experience (August 23)
****************
How grateful to our feeling is the approach of autumn. We have had no
serious story since spring. What a salad to my spirits is the cooler, dark
day. (August 25)
****************
Morning is full of promise. Evening is pensive. (August 31)
************
"Of all the strange and accountable things,
this journalizing is the strangest"
ÐHDT
*******
His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I
think they were not meant to be read. I alone might read them
intelligently. To most others they would only give false
impressions. I have never been able to understand what he
meant by his life. Why did he care so much about being a writer?
Why did he pay so much attention to his own thoughts? Why
was he so dissatisfied with everyone else, etc? Why was he so
much interested in the river and the woods and the sky, etc?
Something peculiar, I judge.
- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's
***********