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JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IV, No. 1
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
October 2002
"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts." (Journal, July 1840)
I started this project in July 1997. A half-year later, Journal Drippings
was born as an email digest to faculty, friends outside the school, and
former students. Here are the words, the startling thoughts, and amazing
descriptions that caught my eye, though I do omit many famous lines that
found their way into Thoreau's best-known essays. I have tried to include
here only what is less-easily available. I am now almost 2,800 pages into
the journal, with some 5200 to go. There's no time to lose, so....
***********
I will endeavor to separate the tide in my thoughts, or what is due to the
influence of the moon, from the current distractions and fluctuations.
(Sept, 3, 1852)
***********
The golden glow of autumn concentrated more golden than the sun...The
earth wears different colors of liveries at different seasons. If I come
by at this season, a golden blaze will salute me from a thousand suns.
(Sept. 13)
***********
How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its
part while the day lasts. Nature never lost a day, nor a moment. (Same)
***********
What makes this a great day for hawks?...A hawk must get out of the woods,
must get above it, where he can sail...Kites without strings. Where is the
boy that flied them? (Sept. 14)
***********
What produces this flashing air of autumn?-a brightness as if there were
not enough green to absorb the light. (Sept. 17)
***********
My friend is he who can make a good guess at me, hit me on the wing.
(Sept. 21))
***********
In love we impart to each other the subtlest immaterial form of thought or
atmosphere, the best of ourselves, such as commonly vanishes or evaporates
in aspirations. The lover alone perceived and dwells in a certain human
fragrance. To him humanity is not only a flower, but an aroma and a flavor
also. (Sept. 22)
***********
It is not in vain, perhaps, that every winter the forest is brought to our
door, shaggy with lichens. Even so humble a shape in our woodpile, it
contains sermons for us. (Sept. 26)
***********
Ah, if only I could put into words the music I hear; that music would
bring tears to the eyes of marble statues. (Sept. 28)
***********
(After hunting and capturing honeybees)): I feel the richer for this
experience. it taught me that even the insects in my path are not loafers,
but have their special errands. Not merely and vaguely in this world, but
in the hour, each is about his business." (Sept. 30)
***********
It is not in vain that the flowers bloom and bloom late too, in favored
spots. To us they are a culture and a luxury., to to bees meat and drink.
The tiny bee which we though we lived far away there in a flower-bell in
that remote vail, he is a great voyager and annon he rises over the top of
the wood and sets sail with his sweet cargo strait for his distant
hive-How well they know the woods and fields and haunt of every flower!
(Same)
***********
Now is true autumn; all things are ripe and crisp (Oct. 11)
***********
What an ample share of the light of heaven each pond and lake on the
surface of the globe enjoys! No woods are so dark and deep, but it is
light above the pond. It's window or skylight is as broad as its surface.
It lies out patent to the sky. (Oct 12)
***********
How Father LeJeune pestered the poor Indians with God at every turn (they
must have thought it his one idea), only getting their attention when they
required some external aid to save them from starving! Then indeed they
were good Christians! (Oct. 15)
************
"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. IV, No. 2
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
November 2002
"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me as my own thoughts."
-Henry David Thoreau
"Thoreau's mind has been haunting mine for most of my life."
-Edward Abbey
*******
Many a man, when I tell him I have been to a mountain, asks if I took a
glass with me. No doubt I could have seen further with a glass and
particular objects more distinctly--could have counted more meetinghouse;
but this has nothing to do with the particular beauty and grandeur of the
view which an elevated position affords. It was not to see a few
particular objects, as if they were near at hand, as I had been accustomed
to see them, that I ascended the mountain, but to see an infinite variety,
far and near in relation to each other. , thus reduced to a single
picture. The facts of science, in comparison with poetry, are wont to be
as vulgar as looking from the mountain with a telescope.
(Oct 20)
********
(Speaking of worm eggs): "This reminds me that winter does not put his
rude finger in the bottom of the brooks." (Oct 21, 1852)
********
The forest has never so good a setting and foreground as seen from the
middle of a lake, rising from water's edge. The water's edge makes
the
best frame for the picture and natural boundary to the forest. (Same)
********
My friend is one whom I need, who takes me for what I am. A stranger takes
me for something else than I am...The stranger supposes in our stead a
third person whom we do not know....I cannot abet any man in
misapprehending me. (Oct 23)
********
I heard a boy say to another in the street today, "You don't know
much
more that a piece of putty." (Oct 28)
********
In November, a man will eat his heart, if in any month. (Nov. 1)
********
Like many of my contemporaries, I had rarely for many years used animal
food or tea or coffee, etc, etc, not so much because of any
ill-effects...as because it was not agreeable to my imagination. (Nov 27)
********
Why have I ever omitted early rising and a morning walk?(Dec 13)
********
A man should not live without a purpose, and that purpose must be a grand
one. (Dec 13)
********
Both for bodily and mental health, court the present. (Dec 27)
********
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book...I
can impose upon myself tasks which will crush me for life, and this I am
but too inclined to do (Same)
********
One moment of life costs many hours--hours not of business but of
preparation and invitation. Yet the man who who does not betake himself at
once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be
knocking at the doors of heaven all the while, which shall surely be
opened to him. That aim in life is highest which requires the highest and
finest discipline. How much, what infinite leisure it requires, as of a
lifetime, to appreciate a single phenomenon! You must camp down beside it,
as if for life, having reached your land of promise, and give yourself
wholly to it, It must stand for the whole world for you, symbolical of all
things. (Same)
********
On an icy field: " What a crash of jewels as you walk!" (January 1, 1853)
********
I love nature partly because she is not a man, but a retreat from him.
None of his institutions control or pervade here. There a different kind
of right prevails. In her midst, I can be glad with an entire gladness. If
this world were all man, I could not stretch myself. I should lose all
hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another
world. She makes me content with this. None of the joy she supplies is
subject to his rules and definitions. What he touches he taints. In
thought he moralizes. One would think that no free, joyful labor was
possible to him. How infinite and pure is the least pleasure which Nature
is basis, compared with the congratulation of mankind. The joy which
Nature yields is like [that] afforded by the frank words of one we
love......There is no law so strong which a little gladness may not
transgress...I have a little room to myself; it is nature. It is a place
beyond the jurisdiction of human governments. Pile up your books, the
records of sadness, your saws and laws...There is prairie beyond your
laws. Nature is a prairie for outlaws. There are two words. the
post-office and Nature. I know them both. I continually forget mankind and
their institutions, as I do a bank. (Jan 23)
*************
*********
"My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only
of the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I
love to
think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can't discover what that
thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with me. I
have lain fallow long enough." -HDT
********
"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. IV, No. 3
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
December 2002
"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me as my own thoughts."
-Henry David Thoreau
The air is thick and darkened with falling snow, and the woods are being
draped with it in white wreaths. This is winter, They are putting on their
white greatcoats. (January 3, 1853)
*********
I thought of the summery hours when time is tinged with eternityÐrung into
it and becomes of one stuff with itÐHow muchÐhow, perhaps, all-that
is
best in our experience in middle age may be resolved into the memory of
our youth. I remember how I expanded. (January 9)
*********
On the bud of a flower found in winter: "There it patiently sits, or
slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has
never seen. ...How innocent are Nature's purposes! How unambitious! Her
elections are not presidential. The springing and blossoming of this
flower do not depend on the votes of men. (Same)
*********
True words are those, as Trench says, transport, rapture, ravishment,
ecstasy. These are the words I want. This is the effect of music. I am
rapt away by it out of myself. I am inspired. elevated, expanded. I am on
the mount. (January 15)
*********
As I walk the RR causeway, I am, as the last two months, disturbed by the
sound of my steps on the frozen ground. I wish to hear the silence of the
night, for the silence is something positive to be heard. I cannot walk
with my ears covered. I must stand still and listen with open ears, far
from the noises of the village, that night may make its impression on me.
A fertile and eloquent silence. Sometimes the silence is merely negative,
an arid and barren waste in which I shudder, where no ambrosia grows. I
must hear the whispering of a myriad voices. Silence alone is worthy to be
heard. Silence is of various depth and fertility, like soil. And now it is
a mere Sahara, where men perish of hunger and thirst, now fertile bottom,
or prairie of the West. As I leave the village, drawing nearer to the
woods, I listen from time to time to hear the true hounds of silence
baying to the moonÐto know if they are on the track of any game. If
there's no Diana in the night, what is it worth? The silence ringsÐit
is
musical and thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible, I hear
the unspeakable. (January 21)
*********
I do not get much from the blue sky, those twinkling stars and bright snow
fields, reflecting an almost rosaceous light. But when I enter the woods I
am fed by the variety, Ðthe forms of the trees above against the blue.
with stars seen through the pines like the lamps hung on them in an
illumination, the somewhat indistinct and misty fineness of the pine tops,
and the finely divided spray of the oaks, etc., and the shadows of all
these on the snow...These myriad shadows checker the white ground and
enhance the brightness of the enlightened portions. See the shadows of
these oaks which have lost half of their leaves, more beautiful than
themselves, like the shadow of a chandelier, and motionless as if they
were fallen leaves on the snowÐbut shake the tree and all is in motion.
(Same)
*********
Even the creaking of a wagon in a frosty night has the music in it which
allies to the highest and purest strain of the muse. (Same)
*********
The pickerel of Walden! When I see them lying on the ice, or in the well
which the fisherman cuts in the ice, I am always surprised by their rare
beauty, as if they were a fabulous fish; they are so foreign to the
streets, and even the woods; handsome as flowers and gems, golden and
emeraldÐa transcendent and dazzling beauty...They are as foreign as Arabia
to our Concord life, as if these two ends of the earth had come together.
They are not green like the pines, or gray like the stones, or blue like
the sky; but they have, if possible, to my eye, yet rarer colors, like
precious stones. It is surprising that these fishes are caught here. They
are something tropical. That in the deep and capacious spring, far beneath
the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden
road, this great and gold and emerald fish swims! The pearls of Walden...
(January 25)
*********
It is surprising how much room there is in natureÐif a man will follow
his
proper path.
(January 26)
*********
I am surprised that we make no more ado about echoes. They are almost the
only kindred voices I hear. I wonder that the traveler does not oftener
remark on the remarkable echoesÐhe who observes so many things. There
needs to be some actual doubleness like this in nature, for if the voices
which we common hear were all that we ever heard, then what? (February 11)
*************
*********
"My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only
of the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I
love to
think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can't discover what that
thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with me. I
have lain fallow long enough." -HDT
********
"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. IV, No. 4
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
January 2003
"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts."
-HDT
"Says I to myself" should be the motto of my journal."
-Journal, November 11, 1851
****
It was the memorable event of the day, that echo I heard, not anything my
companions said, or the travelers who I met, or my thoughts, for they were
all more repetition or echoes in the worst sense of what I heard and
thought before many times; but this echo was accompanied with novelty, and
by its repetition of my voice, it did more than double that. It was a
profounder Socratic method of suggesting thoughts unutterable to me the
thinker. Under such favorable auspices I could converse with myself and
could reflect; the hour, the atmosphere, and conformation of the ground
permitted it. (Feb. 11, 1853)
***************
The expanding of the pine cones, that too, is a season (Feb. 27)
***************
Methinks that many, if not most men, are a sort of natural mummies. The
life having departed out of them. Decay, purification, and disorganization
have not taken place, but they still keep up a dry and withered semblance
of life.... (March 7)
***************
Nice passage on Sudbury meadows, flooded. (March 8)
***************
What was that sound that came on the softened air? It was the warble of
the bluebird from that scraggly apple orchard yonder. When this is heard,
spring had arrived (March 10)
***************
It is essential that a man confine himself to pursuitsÐa scholar, for
instance, to his studiesÐ which lie next to and conduce to his life, which
do not go against the grain either of his will or imagination. The scholar
finds in his experience some studies to be most fertile and radiant with
life, others dry, barren, and dark. . If he is wise, he will not persevere
in the last, as a plant in the cellar will strive toward the light...Some
men endeavor to a live a constrained life, to subject a whole life to
their wills, as he who said he would give a sign if he were conscious
after his head were cut offÐbut he gave no sign. Dwell as close as
possible the the channel in which your life flows...Men choose darkness
rather than light. (March 12)
***************
You must get your living by loving. (March 15)
***************
To inherit property is not to be bornÐit is to be still-born rather. (Same)
***************
Might not my Journal be called "Field Notes"? (March 21)
***************
It is a genial and reassuring day; the mere warmth of the west wind
amounts almost to balminess. The softness of the air mollifies our own dry
and congealed substance. I sit down by a wall to see if I can muse again.
We become, as it were, pliant and ductile again to strange but memorable
influences; we are led a little way by our genius. We are affected like
the earth, and yield to the elemental tenderness; winter breaks up within
us, the frost is coming out of me, and I am heaved like a road. (Same)
***************
Is the road so rough that it should be neglected? Not only narrow but
rough is the way that leads to life everlasting. Our experience does not
wear upon us. It is seen to be fabulous or symbolical, and the future is
worth expecting. Encouraged I set out once more to climb the mountain of
the earth, for my steps are symbolical steps, and in all my walking I have
not yet reached the top of world yet. (Same)
***************
Whatever your sex or position, life is a battle in which you are to show
your pluck, and woe be to the coward! Whether passed on a bed of sickness
or a tented field, it is ever the same fair play, and admits to no foolish
distinction. Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were
born to succeed, not fail. (Same)
***************
As soon as those spring mornings arrive in which the birds sing, I am sure
to be an early riser. .and waked by my genius. I am waked by inaudible
melodies...I have an appointment with spring. She comes to my window to
wake me... (March 22)
***************
It affects one's philosophy, after so long living in winter quarters
to
see the day dawn from some hill...It is a if we had migrated and were
ready to begin life again in a new country, with new hopes and
resolutions. (Same).
***************
Evylen and others wrote when the language was in a tender, nascent state
and could be molded to express the shades of meaning; when sesquipedalian
words, long since cut and apparently dried and drawn to millÐ not yet to
the dictionary lumberyard, put forth a fringe of green sprouts here or
there, their very bulk ensuring some sap remains...Which words, split into
shingles and laths, will supply poets for ages to come. (March 23)
***************
Man can not afford to be a naturalist to look at Nature directly, but only
with the side of his eye...He must look through and beyond her. To look at
her is as fatal as to look at the head of Medusa. He turns the man of
science to stone. I feel that I may be dissipated by so many observations.
I should be the magnet in the midst of all this dust and feelings...I have
almost a slight headache as the result of all this observing. How to
observe is how to behave. (Same)
***************
[The river] is an extensive common still. (Same)
***************
Without context, in the midst of philosophical reflections, this entry
appears: "Why is the pollen of flowers commonly yellow?" (March
27)
******
*****
***
*
"My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only
of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love
to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can't discover what that
thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with me. I have lain
fallow long enough." -HDT
***********
"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 would like a complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
**
...and please remember to send those "'FIELDSTONES" of thought and
natural
description. How can a wall be build without
neighbors helping to pile stone on
stone?
**********************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IV, No. 5
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
February 2003
"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts."
-HDT
"Says I to myself" should be the motto of my journal."
-Journal, November 11, 1851
****
It is surprising and memorable and, I may add, valuable experience, to be
lost in the woods, especially at night. Sometimes in a snowstorm, even by
day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible
to tell which way leads to the village. Though your reason tells you you
have travelled it one hundred times, yet no object looks familiar, but is
as strange to you as if you were in Tantury. By night, of course, the
perplexity is infinitely greater....Every man must once more learn the
points of the compass as often as he wakes, whether from sleep or from an
abstraction. In fact, not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we
are and the infinite extent of our relations. (March 29, 1853)
*************
Ah, those youthful days! are they never to return? When the walker does
not too curiously observe particulars, but sees, hears, scents, tastes,
and feels only himself--the phenomenon that show themselves in him-his
expanding body, his intellect, and heart. No worm or insect, quadruped or
or bird confined his view, but the unbounded universe is his. A bird is
now a mote in his eye. (Same)
*************
No fields are barren to me as the men of whom I expect everything but get
nothing (April 3)
*************
A warm dripping rain, heard on one's umbrella as on a snug roof and
on
leaves without, suggest comfort. We go abroad in a storm with a slow but
sure contentment, like turtles under their shells....We are all compact
and our thoughts collected. We walk under the clouds and the mist as under
a roof....We too are penetrated and revived by it [the rain]....How the
thirsty grass rejoices...We rejoice with the grass. (April 4)
*************
The rocks speak and tell the tales inscribed on them. Their inscriptions
are brought out. I pause to study their geography. (Same)
*************
I heard, methinks, more birds singing than in even fair weather...tree
sparrows...the sweet strain of the fox-colored sparrows, song sparrows, a
nut hatch, jays, crows, bluebirds, robins, and a large congregation of
blackbirds. They suddenly alight with great din in the stubblefield just
over the wall, not perceiving me and my umbrella behind the pitch pines
and there feed silently; then getting uneasy or anxious, they fly up onto
an apple tree, where being reassured, commences a rich but deafening
concert, o-gurglee-ee-e, o-gurglee ee-e, some of the most liquid notes
ever heard, as if produced by some of the water of the Perian Spring,
flowing through some kind of musical water pipe, and at the same time
setting in motion a multitude of fine vibrating metallic springs. Like a
shepherd merely meditating most enrapturing glees on such a water pipe. A
more liquid bagpipe or clarinet, immersed in bubbles, in a thousand
sprayey notes, the bubbles half lost in the spray (Same).
*************
A rainy day to the walker is solitude and retirement. Like the night, few
travelers are about and they half hidden under umbrellas and confined to
the highways. One's thoughts run in a different channel from usual. It
is
somewhat like the dark day; it is a light night. (Same)
*************
One thing I may depend on: there has been no idling with the flowers. They
advance as steadily as a clock. (April 6)
*************
The river is but a long chain of flooded meadows. (April 7)
*************
When the farmer cleans out his ditches, I mourn the loss of many a flower
which he calls a weed. (April 10)
*************
One of the briefest entries in the Journal. Simply:
"Mouse-ear" (April 15)
*************
Haverill- A peach tree in blossom (April 21)
*************
Haverill-Martins (April 23)
*************
Field horsetail in bloom...How affecting that, annually at this season as
surely as the sun takes a higher course in the heavens, this pure and
simple flower pops out...What a significant though faint utterance of
spring through the veins of the earth! (April 24)
*************
Interesting to me are their habits and conversations who live along the
shores of a great river. (April 27)
******
*****
***
*
"My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only
of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love
to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can't discover what that
thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time
with me. I have
lain fallow long enough." -HDT
***********
"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 would like a complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
**
...and please remember to send those "'FIELDSTONES" of thought and
natural
description. How can a wall be build without
neighbors helping to pile stone upon
stone?
************************************************************
No 'Fieldstones' this month. Ground Frozen. Hoping for a thaw.
****************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IV, No. 6
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
March 2003
"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts."
-HDT
"Says I to myself" should be the motto of my journal."
-Journal, November 11, 1851
****
As I walk through the village at evening when the air is damp I perceive
and am exhilarated by the smell of expanding leaves. ( May 6, 1853)
************
On finding trees planted a hundred years ago: "Nothing more proves the
civility of one's ancestors." (May 8)
************
I have devoted most of my day to Mr.. Alcott...There are never any
obstacles in the way of our meeting. He has no creed. He is not pledged to
any institution. The sanest man I ever knew....Having each some shingles
of thought well-dried, we walk and whittle them, and admire the clear
yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. ....When we walk it seems like the
heavens--whose mother o' pearl and rainbow tints come and go, form and
dissolve--and earth had met together, and righteousness and peace had
kissed each other...We walk together like the most innocent children,
going after wild pinks with case knives. (Same)
************
He is most richest who has the most use for nature as raw material of
tropes and symbols with which to describe his life. (May 10)
************
It will be worth the while to observe carefully the direction and altitude
of the mountains from the Cliffs. The value of the mountains in the
horizon-Ðwould that not be a good theme for a lecture? ...They are
stepping stones to heaven...They are valuable to mankind as is the iris of
the eye to man. They are the path of the translated. The undisputed
territory between heaven and earth. In our travels rising higher and
higher, we at last got to where the earth was blue..They are pastures to
which we drive our thoughts on these 20ths of May. (Same)
************
I sit now on a rock on the west slope of Fairhaven orchard, a half hour
before sunset, this warm, almost sultry evening, the air filled with the
sweetness of apple blossoms...Ðor I think it is mainly that meadow
fragrance stillÐthe sun partially concealed under a low cloud in the west,
the air cleared by last evening's thunder shower, the river now
beautifully smooth....full of light and reflecting the placid western sky
and the dark woods which hang overhang it, I was surprised, on turning
around, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world, it was
so soothing. I saw that I could not go home to supper and lose it. It was
so much fairer, serener, more beautiful that my mood had been. (May 17)
************
On the wood thrush: "Other birds may whistle well, but he the master
of a
finer toned instrument. His song is musical, not from association merely,
not from variety, but the character of its tone. It is all divineÐa
Shakespeare among birds, and a Homer too.. (Same)
************
He who cuts down woods beyond a certain limit exterminates birds. (Same)
************
Genius rises above nature; in spite of heat, in spite of cold, works and
lives. (Same)
************
Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human
mind. Have I any dark or ripe orange-yellow thoughts to correspond? The
flavor of my thoughts begins to correspond. (May 23)
************
On looking up at the blue spruce trees: "The edges of the scales of
the
young cones, which are at the tops of the trees...seen against the sunlit
sky or against the light merely, being transparent, are a splendid crimson
color, as if the condensed fire of all sunsets were reflected from them,
like the richest damask or ruby-throated hummingbird breast. They glow
with the crimson fires of the sunset sky, reflected over the
swampÐunspeakably rare and precious rubies as you look up at them; but
climb the tree and look down at them, and they are comparatively dull and
opaque. These are the rubies of the swamp. (Same)
************
At Loring's woods, heard and saw a tanager. That contrast of a red bird
with the green pines and the blue sky! Even where I have heard his note
and look for him and find the bloody fellow, sitting on a dead twig of a
pine, I am always startled...That incredible red, with the green and blue,
as if these were the trinity we wanted. Yet with his hoarse note, he pays
for his color. I am transported; these are not the woods I am ordinarily
in. He sunk Concord in his thoughts. How he enhances the wildness and
wealth of the woods! (Same)
************
A turtle walking is as if a man were to try to walk by sticking his legs
and arms merely out the windows. (May 24)
******
*****
***
*
"My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only
of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love
to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet
can't discover what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed
time
with me. I have
lain fallow long enough." -HDT
***********
"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 would like a complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
**
...and please remember to send those "'FIELDSTONES" of thought and
natural
description. How can a wall be build without
neighbors helping to pile stone upon
stone?
****************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IV, No. 7
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
April 2003
"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts."
-HDT
"Says I to myself" should be the motto of my journal."
-Journal, November 11, 1851
****
This edition of Journal Drippings is dedicated to
my beloved late friend and former student,
Burr Nelson, LS Ô76
****
The crickets which I have heard for a week now more and more, as much as
anything mark a new season. They are importers of thought into the
worldÐthe poor trivial world, wholesalers in the article. (May 27, 1853)
************
The toads, too, completely fill the air with their dreamy snore; so that I
wonder that everyone does not does not remark upon it, and the first time
they hear it, do not rush to the riversides and the pools and capture a
thousand; but hardly the naturalist knows whence the sound proceeds, and
nobody else seems to hear it at all. (Same)
************
The morning wind forever blows; the poem of the world is uninterrupted,
but few are ears that hear it. (May 30)
************
Some incidents in my life have seemed far more allegorical than actual;
they were so significant that they plainly served no other use...they have
been like myths or passages in a myth, rather than incidents or history
which have to wait to become significant. Quite in harmony with my
subjective philosophy. This for instance: that when I thought I knew the
flowers so well, the beautiful purple azalea or pinxter flower should be
shown to me by the hunter who found it. Such facts are lifted quite above
the the level of the actual. They are all just events as my imagination
prepares me for, no matter how incredible...That which seemed a rigid wall
of vast thickness unexpectedly proved a thin and modulating drapery. The
boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity
of our imaginations. The fact that a rare and beautiful flower which we
never saw, perhaps never heard of, for which there was no place in our
thought, may at length be found in our immediate neighborhood, is very
suggestive. (May 31)
************
Men will go further and pay more to see a tawdry picture on canvass, a
poorly painted scene, than to behold the fairest or grandest scene that
nature ever displays in their immediate vicinity, though they may never
have seen it in their lives. (June 2)
************
I am convinced that there is no very important difference between a New
Englander's religion and a Roman's. We both worship in the shadow
of our
sins...It is absurd to think that these farmers dressed in their Sunday
clothes, proceeding to church, differ essentially in this respect from the
Roman peasantry. They have merely changed the number and names of their
gods. Men were very good back then as they are now, and loved one another
as muchÐor as little. (June 5)
************
The heaven and the earth are one flower, the earth is the calyx, the
heavens the corolla.
************
[Before sunset] This seems to be the hour to be sauntering far from home,
your thoughts being already turned to home, your walk is in one sense
ended, you are in that favorable frame of mind, described by De Quincey,
[as] open to great impressions and you see those rare sights with the
unconscious side of the eye, which you did not see by a direct gaze
before. The dews begin to descend in your mind, its atmosphere is strained
of all impurities; and home is farther away than ever. Here is home; the
beauty of the world impresses you. There is a coolness in your mind as in
a well. Life is too grand for supper. (June 14)
************
One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful
reserve. (June 17)
************
After coming across a large toadstool: "What part does it play in the
economy of the world?" (June 18)
************
The moon comes out of the mackerel cloud and the traveler rejoices. How
can a man write the same thoughts by the light of the moon, resting his
book on a rail by the side of a remote potato field, than he does by the
weight of the sun, on his study table? The light is but a luminousness. My
pencil seems to move through a creamy, mystic medium. The moonlight is
rich and somewhat opaque like cream, but the daylight is thin and blue
like skim milk. I am less curious than in the presence of the sun; my
instincts have more influence. (Same)
************
How significant that the rich, black mud of our dead stream produces the
water lilyÐ out of that fertile slime springs this spotless purity! It is
remarkable that these flowers which are most emblematical of purity should
growing the mud. (June 19)
************
I do not remember a warmer night than the last. In my attic, under the
roof, with all the windows and doors open, there was still not a puff of
the usual coolness of the night. It seemed as if heat which the roof had
absorbed during the night was being reflected down on me. It was far more
intolerable than by day. I heard the sounds made by pigs and horses in the
neighborhood and of the children who were partially suffocated by the
heat. It seemed as if it would be something to tell of, the experience of
that night, as of the Black Hole of Calcutta in a degree, if one survived
it. (June 22)
************
As I come over the hill, I hear the wood thrush singing its evening lay.
This is the only bird whose note affects me like music, affects the flow
and tenor of my thought, my fancy and imagination. It lifts and
exhilarates me. It is inspiring. It is a medicative draught to my soul. It
is an elixir to my eyes and a fountain of youth to all my senses. It
changes all hours to an eternal morning. It banishes all trivialness. It
reinstates me in my dominion, make me lord of creation, is chief musician
in my court. This minstrel sings in a time, a heroic age, with which no
event in the village can be contemporary. (Same)
************
So there is something in the music of the cowbell, something sweeter and
more nutritious than in the milk which the farmers drink...I long for
wildness, a nature I cannot put my foot through, where the wood thrush
forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on
the grass, and the day is forever improved...A New Hampshire everlasting
and unfallen. (Same)
************
All that is ripest and fairest in the wilderness and the wild man is
preserved and transmuted to us in the strain of the wood thrush. It is the
mediator between barbarism and civilization. It is unrepentant as Greece.
(Same)
******
*****
***
*
"My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only
of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love
to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can't discover what that
thing is. I feel fertile merely.
It is seed time with me. I have lain fallow long enough." -HDT
***********
"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 would like a complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
**
...and please remember to send those "'FIELDSTONES" of thought and
natural
description. How can a wall be build without
neighbors helping to pile stone upon
stone?
*************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IV, No. 8
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
May 2003
"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts."
-HDT
"Says I to myself" should be the motto of my journal."
-Journal, November 11, 1851
****
Special Seasonal Note:
The end of college terms and the arrival of spring mark the end of another
year of Journal Drippings. Words can only carry us so far. Now it's time
to go outside and see for ourselves. Three and one-half years into this
project, there remain almost 4000 pages of Thoreau's Journal. We are
almost at the halfway point. So, "to be continued."
If you who are graduating from college (congratulations!) and moving on
the next stage in your life, and if you are feeling a little scared, and
therefore would appreciate these monthly reminders of "broad Nature"
to
lean on, please remember to send me your new email address. Let these be
the drips that keep on dripping...and giving.
***
To all L-S alumni:
Here's advance word that on Memorial Day Weekend 2004, there will be
"Great Gathering" of alumni at L-S to say farewell to the building,
to
renew friendships, and to re-create an alumni association. I will be fun,
fun, fun. All alumni classes will be welcome--and expected! Bring your
sleeping bag if you wish and camp out in the courtyards or your favorite
old hangout. More details forthcoming! Mark it on your calendar. E-mail
everyone on your mail list. If anyone has the time to help with organizing
or to help to run things at the event, please email me.
**************
How wonderfully moral our whole life! There is never an instant truce
between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
It is sung of in the music of the harp....Though the youth at last grows
indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent; they are still
and forever on the side of the most tender and sensitive. (June 22, 1853)
**********
Listen in every zephyr for some reproof...We cannot touch a string, awake
a sound, but it reproves us. Many an irksome noise in our neighborhood,
though a long distance off, is heard as music and a proud sweet satire on
the meanness of our life. Not a music to dance to, but to live by. (Same)
**********
On townspeople who came to fish: " They might go there a thousand times,
perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom, and
learn their purpose pure: before they began to angle for the pond
itself...They did not think they were lucky unless they got a long string
of fish, though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond, all the
while. (Same)
**********
The governor faintly remembers the pond, for he went a-fishing there when
he was a boy, but now he is too old and dignified to go a-fishin' &
so he
knows it no longer. If the legislature regards it, it is chiefly to
regulate the number of hooks to be used in fishing there; but they know
nothing about the hook of hooks. (Same)
**********
There is another instance of common experience. When I am shown from
abroad, or hear of, or in any [way] become interested in some plant, or
other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. (July 14)
**********
How oily smooth the water in this moonlight! (July 20)
**********
Went, in pursuit of some boys who had had stolen a boat seat, to Fair
Haven. (July 21)
**********
Nature is beautiful only as a place. Where a life is to be lived, it is
not beautiful to him who has not resolved on a beautiful life. (Same)
**********
The scent of some [early apples], very early ones that I have passed on my
walks, imparting some ripeness to the year, has excited me somewhat. It
affects me like a performance, a poem, a thing alone, and all the year is
not a mere promise of Nature's. (July 24)
**********
Looking back on spring from summer: "It is like another and fabulous
age
to look back on, when earth's veins are full of moisture and violets
burst
out on every hillside. Spring is the reign of water; summer, of heat and
dryness, winter of cold." (Same)
**********
The atmosphere of the western horizon is impurpled, tingeing the
mountains. A golden sheen is reflected from the river so brightly it
dazzles me as much as the sun. The now silver-plated river is burnished
gold there.... (Same)
**********
On the sun: "He is almost ready to dipÐa round red disk shorn of
his
beamsÐhis head shaved like a captive led forth to execution." (Same)
**********
I have for years had a great deal of trouble with my shoe-strings because
they got untied continually. [He goes on to describe his solution which is
the knot we use today] (July 25)
**********
The stillness and shade enable you to collect and concentrate your
thoughts. ((August 7)
**********
Have a great summer all!
Find shade!
Collect & concentrate thoughts!
******
*****
***
*
"My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only
of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love
to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can't discover what that
thing is. I feel fertile merely.
It is seed time with me. I have lain fallow long enough." -HDT
***********
"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
***********
**
...and please remember to send those "'FIELDSTONES" of thought and
natural
description. How can a wall be build without
neighbors helping to pile stone upon
stone?
**