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Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
October 2003
I took up reading Thoreau's Journal six years ago and am now 3600 pages into it, just about the half-way point. As Thoreau tells us, once you take a bite of a wild apple, it can be hard to stop. And so year seven begins...and the adventure continues into the resplendent, sunset mind of one Henry David Thoreau. I hope you have enjoyed the excepts thus far.
* * *
See special note below for L-S alumni
* * *
"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
***
The last was a melting night and a carnival for mosquitoes. (August 13, 1853)
*****
How earthy old people become moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and crickets.. (August 16).
*****
What means the sense of lateness that so comes over one now as if the rest of the year were downhill and if we had not performed anything before, we should not now? The season of flowers and promise may be said to be over now and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit? The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talents? Ah, nature prompts and reproves us. How early in the year it begins to be late....it seems irretrievably late! The year is full of warnings of its shortness, as is life...The sound of so many insects and the sight of so many flowers affect us so....They say, "For the night cometh in which no man may work." (August 18)
*****
It is a glorious and ever memorable day...It is a day affecting the spirits of men, but there is nobody to enjoy it but ourselves. What do the laborer ox and the laborer man care for the beautiful days? Will the lawmaker when he comes home tonight know that this has been such a beautiful day? The day itself has been the great phenomenon, but will it be reported in any journal, as the storm is and the heat...Is not such a day worthy of a hymn...It might be spent as a natural sabbath. (August 19)
*****
Live in each season as it passes, breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each...Be blown on by all the winds. Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of Nature, in all her streams and oceans in all seasons. Go green with spring, yellow and ripe with autumn...For all Nature is doing her best in each moment to make us well. (August 26)
*****
Saw the comet in the west tonight. It made me think of those imperfect white seeds in a watermelon. (August 26
*****
Nature made a highway from southwest to northeast through this town (not to say county), broad and beautiful, which attracted Indians to dwell upon it and settlers from England at last, ten rods wide and bordered by the most fertile soil in the town, a tract most abounding in vegetable and animal life; yet, though it passed through the centre of the town, I have been upon it the livelong day and have not met a traveller. Out of twenty-odd hundred dwellers near its banks, not one has used this highway today for a distance of four miles at least. (August 30)
*****
The river nowadays is a permanent mirror stretching without end through the meadows....There it lies, a mirror uncracked, unsoiled. (Sept. 1)
*****
The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether black or white, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their good. (Same)
*****
How pleasant to walk over beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling falling leaves...How beautiful they go to their graves! How gently they lay themselves down and turn to mould! and painted of a thousand hues and fit to make the beds of us living. So they troup to their graves light and frisky. They put on no weeds. Merrily, they go scampering over the earth, selecting their graves, whispering all through the woods about it...They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again...They are about to add a leaf breath to the depth of the soil! We are all richer for their decay. (Oct 20)
*****
I cannot easily dismiss the subject of the fallen leaves. How densely they conceal the water, for several feet in length, amid the alders and button bushes and maples along the shore of the river still light, tight, and dry boats, dense cities of boats...And then see this great fleet of scattered leaf boats, still tight and dry, each one curled up on every side by the sun's skill....like the great fleets which you mingle on entering some great mart...Consider what a vast crop is this annual shed upon the earth. This more than any mere grain or seed is the great harvest of the year...A myriad wrappers for germinating seeds.... By what subtle chemistry they will mount up again, climbing by the sap in the trees. The ground is all parti-colored with them. ...The frost touches them and, with the slightest breath of day or jarring of earth's axis, they came floating down at the first earnest touch of Autumn's wand. (Oct. 22)
**************
******
*****
***
*
"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"
HDT
*******
"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
*************
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 to camp out in the courtyards or at 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.
For latest details see:
http://www.lsrhs.net/alumni/gathering.html
**********************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. V, No. 2
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
November 2003
***
As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many ways as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth. (Oct 22, 1853)
********
I well remember the time of year I first heard the dream of the frogs...Loud and prevailing as it is, most men do not hear it at all. It is, to them, perchance, a sort of simmering or seething of all nature. That afternoon the dream of the frogs rang through the elms by the little river and affected the thoughts of men though they were not conscious that they heard it. (Oct 26)
********
How watchful we be must be to keep the crystal well that we were made, clear! What other liberty is there worth having if we have not freedom and peace in our minds if our inmost and most private man is but a sour and turbid pool? Often we are so jarred with chagrins in dealing with the world, that we cannot reflect. Everything beautiful impresses us is sufficient to itself. (Same)
********
Ah! The world is too much with us and our whole soul is stained by what it works in, like the dyer's hand. A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread. (Same)
********
It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us when I meet with such in my journal. It affects me as poetry and I appreciate that other season and that particular phenomenon more than at the time. The world so seen is one spring, and full of beauty. You only need to make a record of an average summer's day and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show. Only the rarest flower, the purest melody of the season, thus comes down to us. (Same)
********
When, after feeling dissatisfied with my life, I aspire to something better, am more scrupulous, more reserved and continent as if expecting, somewhat suddenly I find myself full of life as a nut of meat am overflowing with a quiet, genial thoughtfulness. I think to myself, I must attend to my diet; I must get up earlier and take a morning walk; I must have done with luxuries and devote myself to my muse. So I dam up my stream, and my waters gather to a head. I am freighted with thought. (Same).
********
This is November The landscape prepared for winter, without snow, when the
forests and fields put on their sober winter hue, we begin to look more to the
sunset for color and variety.
(Oct. 30)
********
What is Nature unless there is an eventful human life passing within her? Many joys and many sorrows are the lights and shadows in which she shows most beautiful (Nov. 2)
********
Heard a bluebird about a week ago. (Nov. 3)
********
I make it my business to extract from Nature whatever nutriment she can furnish me, though at the risk of endless iteration. I milk the sky and the earth.
********
I hear the sound of the wood chopper's axe (Nov. 3)
********
It is is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way. There are these little sparrows with white in tail, perhaps the prevailing bird of late, which has flitted before me so many falls and springs, yet have been, as it were, strangers to me, and I have not inquired when they came and whither they were going, or what their habits were. It is surprising how little many of us are contented to know about the sparrows which drift in the air before us just before the first snow. (Nov.6)
********
I should like to see a man whose diet was berries and nuts alone [as in the Iron Age]. Yet I would not rob the squirrels, whom before any man, are the true owners.
********
10am: Our first snow...a very fine sun...the children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess.
********
I cannot regard it as as a kindness in those who have the steering of me that by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have been nailed down to this my native region for so long and steadily and made to study and love this spot of earth more and more. What would signify in comparison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the whole earth, instead got by wandering. The travellers is but a barren and comfortless condition. Wealth will not buy a man a home in nature--house nor farm there. (Nov. 12)
********
The rich man buys woolens and furs, and sits naked and shivering still in spirit, besieged by cold and wet. But the poor Land of Creation, cold and wet he makes to warm him, and be his garments. (Same)
********
(By the river): "The occasional slight sparkling, on either hand, along the waters edge, attends me. (Same)
********
I hear one cricket singing still, faintly, deep in the bank...His theme is life immortal. The last cricket, piping to himself, as the last man might. (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"
HDT
*******
"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
*************
****************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. V, No. 3
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
December 2003
The dark squadrons of hostile crowds have now swept over the face of the moon, and she appears unharmed and riding triumphant in her chariot. Suddenly, they dwindle...They pass away and are forgotten like bad dreams (Nov. 12, 1853)
******
[After describing how "Nature shuts its door" and "no longer teems with life in November"...] ÔAnd still the heavens are unchanged, the same starry geometry looks down on their [the frogs] active and dormant state. And the next frog that puts his eye forth from the mud next spring shall see the same starry eyes ready to play bo-peep with him, for they do not go into the mud.
******
October is the month of painted leaves, when all the earth, not merely flowers, but fruits and leaves are ripe. With respect to its color and season, it is the sunset month of the year, when the earth is painted like the sunset sky...In October, the man is ripe even to its stalk and leaves; he is pervaded by his genius, when all the forest is a universal harvest...(Nov 14)
******
October answers to that period in the life of man, when he is no longer dependent on his transient moods when all his experience ripens into wisdom, but every root, branch, leaf of him glows with maturity. What he has been and done in his spring and summer appears. He bears his fruit. (Same)
******
How can we omit to go forth on the water these windy days and nights to be tossed by waves? It is some such novelty to a landsman as an earthquake to take the hand of Nature and be shaken. Heard one cricket tonight. (Same)
******
From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks whose hands are comparatively soft. (Nov. 15)
******
The cocks are the only birds I hear, but they are a host. They crow as freshly
and bravely as ever, while poets go down the stream, and degenerate into science
and prose. (No. 23)
******
The water, going down, but still is seen from the window perfectly smooth and full of reflections. What lifts and lightens and makes heaven of the earth is the fact that you see the reflections of the humblest weeds against the sky, but you cannot put your head low enough to see the substance so. The reflection enchants us, just as an echo does. (Same).
******
Now a man will eat his heart, if ever, now while the earth is bare, barren, cheerless and we have the coldness of winter and without the variety of ice and snow; but methinks the variety and compensation are in the stars now. How bright they are now in contrast with the dark earth. (same).
******
He calls the sunsets of November: "The russet afterglow of the year." (Nov. 29)
******
A man advances in his walk, somewhat as a river does, meanderingly, and such too is the progress of the race. (Nov. 30)
******
On a rising hill I saw a few red stains like veins of red quartz on a ground of feldspar (same).
******
It is an evening for the muskrats to be abroad... (same)
******
VOL. VI: December 1853- August 1854)
******
When I see the humble clamshells lying open along the riverside, displaying
some blue or violet or rainbow tints, I am reminded that some pure serenity
has occupied him...There the clam dwells within a little pearly heaven of its
own. (Dec 3, 1853)
******
What I write about home I understand so well comparatively! and I write with such repose and freedom from exaggeration. (Dec. 10)
******
On the articles of commerce in Boston: "The more barrels, the more Boston." (Dec. 25)
******
The thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds as the leaves are blown from the trees. Some withered deciduous ones are left to rustle and our old immortal evergreens. Some lichenous thoughts still adhere to us. (Dec 29)
**************
******
*****
***
*
"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"
HDT
*******
"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
*************
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 to camp out in the courtyards or at 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.
For latest details see:
http://www.lsrhs.net/alumni/gathering.html
***************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. V, No. 4
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
January 2004
**********
Happy New Year!
**********
In winter, even man is to a slight extent dormant...the range of his afternoon
walk is somewhat narrower; he is more or less confined to the highways and woodpaths.
The weather oftener shuts him up in his burrow...he is satisfied if he only
gets out to the Post Office in the course of a day...Most men do not now extend
their walks beyond the village street...Even our experience is something like
wintering in the pack. (Dec. 30, 1853)
There are a few sounds still which never fail to affect meI know of no missionaries to us heathen comparable to them. The notes of the wood thrush and the sound of a vibrating [telegraph or harp] chord.....affect me as many sounds once did often, and as almost all should. The strains of the aeolian harp and the wood thrush are the truest and loftiest preachers that I know now left on this earth. They, as it were, lift us up in spite of ourselves. They intoxicate us. What was that strain mixed into which the world was dropped but as a lump of sugar to sweeten the draught? I would be drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk, dead drunk to this world without it forever. . He that hath ears, let him hear...The hearing of it makes men brave...These things remind me of my immortality, which is else a fable. I hear it, and I realize and see clearly what at other times I only dimly remember. I get the value of the earth's extent and the sky's depth. It, as it were, takes me out of my body and gives me the freedom of all bodies and all nature. I leave my body in a trance and accompany the zephyr and the fragrance. (Dec. 31)
**********
The snow is like a mold, showing the form of eddying currents of air which have been impressed upon it. (January 1, 1854)
**********
Discussing animals and animal tracks: "The snow is the great betrayer." (Same)
**********
Why do the vast snow plains give us pleasure, the twilight of the bent and
half-buried woods?
Is not all there consonant with virtue, justice, purity, courage, magnanimity?...If
one could detect the meaning of the snow, would he not be on the trail of some
higher life that has been abroad in the night? (Same)
**********
I would fain be a fisherman, hunter, farmer, preacher, etc., but fish, hunt, farm, preach other things than usual. (Same)
**********
The trees are white with a hoar frost...They look like the ghosts of trees. (January 2)
**********
The tints of the sunset sky are never purer and more ethereal than in the coldest winter days. This evening, though the colors are not brilliant, the sky is crystalline and the pale fawn-tinged clouds are very beautiful. I wish to get on a hill to look down on the winter landscape. We go about these days as if we had fetters on our feet. We walk in the stocks, stepping into the holes made by our predecessors. (Same)
**********
His description of the color of the winter trees: "Modest, Quaker colors." (Jan. 3)
**********
...This morning hope is soon lost in what becomes the routine of the day, and we do not recover ourselves again until we land on the pensive shores of evening, shores which skirt the great western continent of the night. At sunset, we look into the west. For centuries, our thoughts fish these grand banks that lie before the newfoundland...(Jan 8)
**********
Saw a red squirrel on the wall. Human beings with whom I have no sympathy are far stranger to me than inanimate matter rocks or earth. Looking at the last, I feel comparatively as if I were with my kindred. (Jan 17)
**********
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. (Jan 27)
**********
I desire to speak somewhere without bounds, in order that I may attain to an expression in some degree adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. From a man in a waking moment to men in their waking moments. Wandering toward the more distant boundaries of a wider pasture. (Feb 5)
**********
Speaking of a very cold day: "Does the whistle of a locomotive sound differently, tear the air any more [in] this weather?"
**********
Is not January alone pure winter? December belongs to the fall; [it] is a wintry November. February is to the spring; it is a snowy March. (Feb 9)
**************
******
*****
***
*
"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"
HDT
*******
"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
***********
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. V, No. 5
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
February 2004
**********
[On an ice coated cliff]: "I hear the trickling of water under great ice
organ pipes."
(February 12, 1854)
************
[In the cold, clear air]: "The unrelented steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into song, a song of winter trumpets screaming cold, hard, tense, frozen music like the winter sky itself, in the blue livery of winter's band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky. There is no hint of incubation in a jay's cry. Like the creak of a cartwheel. There is no cushion of sounds now. They tear our ears." (Same)
************
The sun being low, I see as I skate, reflected from the surface of the ice, flakes of rainbow, somewhat like cobwebs, where the great slope of the crystallization falls at a right angle, six inches or a foot across...Think of this kind of mosaic and tessellation for your floor! (Same)
************
The pond does not thunder every night and I do not know its law exactly...yet it has its law to which [it] thunders obedience when it should, as surely as the buds expand in spring. For the earth is all alive and covered with feelers of sensation, papillae....Though you may perceive no difference in the temperature, the pond does. (same)
************
The telegraph sounds at every post. It is a harp with one string, the first strain from the American lyre. (Feb. 14)
************
[On reading about the Kansas/Nebraska Bill & some congressional speeches]: "What trifling upon a serious subject. While honest men are sawing wood for them outside, your Congress halls have an ale-house odor a place for stares, jokes, and vulgar wit. It compels me to think of my fellow creatures as apes and baboons." (Feb 18)
************
[He makes a fire near Walden]: The occasional snapping of the fire was exhilaration. I put on some hemlock boughs, and the rich salt cracking of its leaves was like mustard to the ears the firing of unaccountable regiments Dead trees love the fire." (Feb 20)
************
You cannot walk too early in in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and exploredness...It always gladdens me to see a willow, though catkineless and leafless, rising over the new-fallen, untrodden snow, in some dry hollow in the woods, for then I feel nearer to spring. (Feb 21)
************
It may have been given to Wetherall to see the first bluebird, so much has been withholden from him." (March 2)
************
Channing, talking with Minot, said, "I suppose you'd like to die now." "No," said Minot, "I've toughed it through winter and I want to stay and hear the bluebirds once more. (March 5)
************
Saw a black caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? (Same)
************
It is remarkable how true each flower is to its season. (March 7)
************
Shall the earth be regarded as a graveyard. a necropolis merely and not also
as a granary filled with seeds of life? Is not its fertility increased by this
decay? (March 11)
************
As with tinkling sounds, the sources of streams burst their icy fetters, so the rills of music begin to flow and swell the general quire of spring. Memorable the warm light of the spring on russet fields in the morning. (March 12)
**************
******
*****
***
*
"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"
-HDT
*******
"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
**************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. V, No. 6
Excerpts from Thoreau’s Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
March 2004
**********
My companion tempts me to certain licenses of speech, i.e., to reckless and
sweeping expressions, which I am wont to regret that I have used. That is, I
find that I have used more harsh, extravagant, and cynical expressions concerning
mankind and individuals than I intended. I find it difficult to put to him a
sufficiently moderate statement. I think it is because I do not have his sympathy
in my sober and constant view. He asks for a paradox, an eccentric statement,
and too often I give it to him.
(March 12, 1854)
***********
Is it peculiar for a song sparrow to dodge behind and hide in walls and the like? (Same)
***********
I am sorry to say that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism
until you provoke him. Severe truths expressed with some bitterness (March
15)
***********
A conversation with an elderly & ill friend: “Minott confessed to me today that he has not been to Boston since the last war, or 1815. Aunt say he has not been 10 miles from home since…When I asked if he would like to go to Boston, he answered he was going to another Boston.” (March 23)
***********
Got first proof of Walden. (March 28)
[Editor’s note: This year is the 150th anniversary of his publication!]
***********
In criticizing your writing, trust your fine instinct. There are many things we come near questioning, but do not question. When I have sent off my manuscripts to the printer, certain objectionable sentences or expressions are sure to obtrude themselves to my attention with force though I had not consciously suspected them before. My critical instinct then at once breaks the ice and comes to the surface. (March 31)
***********
At the Lyceum the other night, I felt that the lecturer had chosen a theme
too foreign to himself and so failed to interest me as much as formerly He described
things not or near his heart, but toward his extremities and superficies. There
was no central nor centralizing thought in the lecture.
(April 8)
***********
Heard a prolonged dream from a frog in the river meadow; or was it a toad?
(Same)
***********
I find I can best criticize my composition best when I stand a little distance from it. –when I do not see it for instance. I make a little chapter of contents which enables me to recall it page by page to my mind, and judge it more impartially when my manuscript is out of the way. The distraction of surveying enables me to rapidly take new points of view. A day or two of surveying is equal to a journey. (Same)
***********
I bought me a spyglass some weeks since. I buy but few things and those not
till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared
to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet.
(April 10)
***********
Saw a dead sucker yesterday. (Same)
***********
While surveying in Lincoln: “ Large ant hills in woods, but no ants”
(April 11)
***********
Waited at the Lincoln depot and hour and a half. Heard the telegraph harp.
I perceived distinctly that man melts at the sound of music, part like a rock
exposed to furnace heat …I observe that it is when I have been intently
at work, and am somewhat listless and abandoned after it, reposing, that the
music visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out of the shadow of my
toil that I look into the light…May not such a record as this be kept
in the Book of Life:
“A man was melted today.” (April 12)
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On the evening of the 5th, the body of a man was found in the river between Fair Haven Pond and Lee’s much wasted. How these events disturb our associations and tarnish the landscape! It is a serious injury come to a stream. (April 13)
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When I meet one of my neighbors who is ridiculously stately, being offended, I say in my mind: “Farewell, I will wait till you get your manners off. Why make politeness of so much consequence, when you are ready to assassinate me with a word? I do not like any better to be assassinated with a rapier than to be knocked down with a bludgeon. Your are so grand. I cannot get within 10 feet of you.” Why will men try to impose on one another? Why not be simple; and pass for what they worth only? O such thin skins, such crockery as I have to deal with! Did they not know I could laugh? Some who have so much dignity they can not be contradicted!…I have met with several who can not afford to be simple and true men, but personate, so to speak, their own idea of themselves, trying to make the manner supply the place of the man. They are puffballs filled with dust and ashes. (April 16)
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It is remarkable how scarce and silent the birds are even in a pleasant afternoon like this, compared with the morning. Within a few days, the warblers have begun to come. They are every hue. Nature made them to show her colors with. There are as many as there are colors and shades. In certain lights, as yesterday against the snow, nothing can be more splendid and celestial than the color of the bluebird. (April 19)
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A man came to me yesterday and to offer me, as a naturalist, a two-headed calf
which his cow had brought forth, but I felt nothing bust disgust at the idea
and began to ask what enormity I had committed to have such an offer made to
me. I am not interested in mere phenomena, though it were the explosion of a
planet, only as may have lain in the experience of a human being. (Same)
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*
“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”
–HDT
*******
“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
*************
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 to camp out in the courtyards or at 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.
For latest details see:
http://www.lsrhs.net/alumni/gathering.html
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. V, No. 7
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
April 2004
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Message below for L-S alumni
******
How can a man be a wise man if he doesn't know any better how to live than other men? if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle? Does wisdom work in a treadmill? Does wisdom fail?ÉIs she merely the miller who grinds the finest logic? Did Plato get his living in a better way or more successfully than his contemporaries? Did he succumb to the difficulties of life like other men? Did he merely prevail over them by indifference or by assuming grand airs? Or find it easier to live because his aunt remembered him in her will? (April 21. 1854)
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How we prize any redness on the ground!-a red stain in a stone or even a coxcomb lichen on a stump. (Same)
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The first April showers are even fuller of promise and a certain moist serenity than the sunny days. How thickly the green blades are starting up amid the russet! The tinge of green is gradually increasing in the face of the russet earth. (April 23)
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We who live this plodding life below never know how how many eagles fly over us. (Same)
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The woods are full of myrtle birds this afternoon...These small birds-and all are small birds-seen against the sky at a distance look black. There is not breadth enough to their colors to make any impression; they are mere motes intercepting the light, the substance of a shadow. (April 26)
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The wood thrush afar-so superior a strain to that of other birds. I was doubting if it could affect me as of yore. I did not believe there could be such differences. This is the gospel according to the wood thrush. He makes a sabbath out of a week day. I could go to hear him, could buy a pew in his church. Did he ever practice pulpit eloquence? He is right on the slavery question. (April 27)
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It is only the irresolute and idle who have no leisure for their proper pursuit. Be preoccupied with this, devoted to it and no accident can befall you, no idle engagements distract you. No man ever had the opportunity to postpone a high calling to a disagreeable duty, Misfortunes only occur when a man is false to his genius. You cannot hear music and noise at the same time...Every human being is the artificer of his own fate in these respects. The well have no time to be sick. (Same)
**********
There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i.e., to be significant, must be subjective. (May 6)
**********
It is possible to conceive of an event outside to humanity, it is not of the slightest significance, though it were the explosion of a planet. (Same)
**********
All that a man has to say that can possibly concern mankind is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love-to sing; and if his is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love. (Same)
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I look over the report of the doings of a scientific association and am surprised that there is so little life to be reported; I am put off with a parcel of dry technical terms. Anything living is easily and naturally expressed in popular language. I cannot help suspecting that the life of these learned professors has been almost as inhuman and wooden as a rain gauge or self-registering magnetic machine. They communicate no fact which rise to the temperature of a blood-heat. It doesn't all amount to one rhyme.( Same)
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May 1: also dandelions, perhaps the first yesterday. This flower makes a great show,- a sun itself in the grass. How emphatic it is! You cannot but observe it set in the liquid green grass even at a distance. (Same)
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At sunset across the flooded meadow to Nashawtuck. The water is becoming calm. The sun is just disappearing as I reach the hilltop, and the horizon's edge appears with beautiful distinctness. As the twilight approaches or deepens, the mountains, those pillars which point their way to heaven, assume a deeper hue. (May 7)
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It is long since I have sailed on so broad a tide; How dead would the globe seem especially at this season, if it were not for these water surfaces! We are slow to realize water-the beauty and magic of it. It is interestingly strange to us... (May 8)
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I was delighted to find that our usually peaceful river could toss me so. How much more exciting than to be planting potatoes with those men in the field. What a different world! (Same)
**********
Planted melons. (May 9)
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"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" HDT
*******
"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
*************
To all L-S alumni:
Here's advance word that on Memorial Day Weekend 2004, there will be a "Great Gathering" of alumni at L-S to say farewell to the building, to renew friendships, and to re-create an alumni association. It will be fun, fun, fun. All alumni classes are welcome--and expected! Bring your sleeping bag if you wish to camp out in the courtyards or at your favorite old hangout. More details forthcoming! Mark it on your calendar. E-mail everyone on your email lists. If anyone has the time to help with organizing or to help to run things at the event, please email me.
For latest details see:
http://www.lsrhs.net/alumni/gathering.html
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. V, No. 8
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!
May 2004
******
Message below for L-S alumni last call!
******
End-of year message:
Here ends the 5th year of Journal Drippings. We are more than halfway through Thoreau's
8-thousand page journal. Next year, more saunters through the sunset mind of our Concord neighbor. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the many L-S alumni on this list who will be graduating from college this year. Onward! If you wish make certain that you continue to receive these Thoreauvian thoughts, please send me your new email addresses, as you acquire them. This will also be the last Dripping that will contain a reminder about the Great Gathering of alumni that will take place at L-S at the end of May. Hope all of you with L-S connections will try to come. I will use this email list one more time this year to share with you some thoughts about the old building, soon be demolished.
Have a great summer all.
************
In Boston the other day, an ornithologist said significantly, "If you hold the bird in your hand ;" but I would rather hold it in my affections. (May 10, 1854)
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My errand this afternoon was chiefly to look at the Gooseberry at Saw Mill Brook. (May 11)
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Nature does not forget the beauty of outline even in a mud turtle's shell. (May 17)
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I was impressed as it were by the intelligence of the brook....who shall distinguish between the law by which a brook finds its river, the instinct [by which] a birds performs its migrations, and the knowledge by which a man steers his ship around the globe? The globe is the richer for the variety of its inhabitants. (Same)
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The loved cawing of a crow heard echoing though a deep pine wood how wild. Unconverted by all our preaching. (May 22)
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On crickets and their singing: "To the birds they say, ÔAh! You speak like children from impulse; Nature speaks through you; but with us it is ripe knowledge. The seasons do not revolve for us; we sing their lullaby.' So they chant, eternal at the roots of the grass. It is heaven where they are....Serenely wise their song has the security of prose. They have drunk no wine but the dew. It is no transient love strain, hushed when the incubating season is past, but a glorifying of God, and enjoying of him forever. They sit aside from the revolution of the seasons. Their strain is as as unvaried as Truth. Only in their saner moments do men hear the crickets. It is balm to the philosophers. It tempers his thoughts....In their song, they ignore our accidents. They are not concerned about the news...for [they] know only the eternal." (Same)
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We soon get through with Nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy. The merest child which has rambled into a copse wood dreams of a wilderness so wild and strange and inexhaustible as Nature can never show him...I expect a fauna more infinite and various, birds of more dazzling colors and more celestial song. How many springs shall I continue to to see the common sucker dead on our river! In me is the sucker I see. (Same)
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The sun is eating up the fog. As I return down the hill, my eyes were cast toward the very dark mountains in the northwest horizon, the remnants of the blue scalloped rim to our saucer.
(May 24)
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It would be worth the while to ask ourselves weekly, Is our life innocent enough? Do we live inhumanely toward man or beast, in thought or act? ...The least conscious and needless injury inflicted on any creature is to an extent a suicide....What peace or life can a murderer have? (May 27)
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The inhumanity of science concerns me, as when I am tempted to kill a rare snake that I may ascertain its species. I feel this is not the means of acquiring true knowledge. (Same)
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Maidenhair fern, how handsome! (May 31)
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The farmer hoeing is wont to look with scorn and pride on a man sitting on a motionless boat a whole half-day... (June 1)
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These virgin shades of the year when everything is tender, fresh, and green, how full of promise! promising bowers of shade in which heroes may repose themselves. I would fain be present at the birth of a shadow. (June 1)
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These warm and dry days, which put spring far behind, the sound of the cricket at noon has a new value and significance, so serene and cool. It is the iced-cream of song. (June 3)
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I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself in relation with Nature. I would fain drink a draft of Nature's serenity. Let deep answer to deep. (June 4)