my so-called poverty

Today I head back to the land of Thoreau. I have missed Boston, although I know that winter is waiting for me with its icy grip. It has finally come to pass that I consider Boston more my home now than St. Thomas. You heard it here first.

Thoreau's blog yesterday (a special 150th anniversary entry) addresses his "so-called poverty", something that I think we have in common. I have to work for a living, and I hate that fact. No matter how engaging the work may be or how delightful the people or stimulating the environment, I still wish I didn't have to work. Though right now, I seem to be enjoying the golden combination of flexible schedule, interesting co-workers and challenging tasks. And I like the people it will most benefit. That's a nice change.

Again and again I congratulate myself on my so-called poverty. I was almost disappointed yesterday to find thirty dollars in my desk which I did not know that I possessed, though now I should be sorry to lose it. The week that I go away to lecture, however much I may get for it, is unspeakably cheapened. The preceding and succeeding days are a mere sloping down and up from it.

In the society of many men, or in the midst of what is called success, I find my life of no account, and my spirits rapidly fall. I would rather be the barrenest pasture lying fallow then cursed with the compliments of kings, than be the sulphurous and accursed desert where Babylon once stood. But when I have only a rustling oak leaf, or the faint metallic cheep of a tree sparrow, for variety in my winter walk, my life becomes continent and sweet as the kernel of a nut. I would rather hear a single shrub oak leaf at the end of a wintry glade rustle of its own accord at my approach, than receive a shipload of stars and garters from the strange kings and peoples of the earth.

I know what he means. Give me the simple life. Make me a bird and my house a nest. Would it be frivolous to say that my goal in life is to clear my head enough to hear the stars?

Winter is the Sabbath of the Year

From Thoreau's journal, 1/9/1859:

At sundown to Walden.

Standing on the middle of Walden I see with perfect distinctness the forms and outlines of the low hills which surround it, though they are wooded, because they are quite white, being covered with snow, while the woods are for the most part bare or very thin-leaved. I see thus the outline of the hills eight or ten rods back through the trees. This I can never do in the summer, when the leaves are thick and the ground is nearly the same color with them. The white hills are now seen as through a veil of stems. Immediately after the wood was cut off, this outline, of course, was visible at all seasons, but the wood, springing up again, concealed it, and now the snow has come to reveal the lost outline.

The sun has been set some minutes, and as I stand on the pond looking westward toward the twilight sky, a soft, satiny light is reflected from the ice in flakes here and there, like the light from the under side of a bird’s wing. It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky. I am inclined to measure the angle at which a pine bough meets the stem. That soft, still, cream-colored sky seems the scene, the stage or field, for some rare drama to be acted on.

C. says the winter is the Sabbath of the year. The perfect winter days are cold, but clear and bright.

Branches and berries graces my drinking glass. Outside air hardens puddles. Every day lengthens lighter skies and this open winter teases thoughts of snow, drives in to reflect and huddle. Thoreau's friend called winter the Sabbath of the year. In our technological days we might put it this way: it's our time of year to hit reset.

Cocoa and fondue, walks in snow (if it ever comes), books and windswept, empty beaches. Friends over and soups, maybe a crafts night.

learning

The expression “a liberal education” originally meant one worthy of freemen. Such is education simply in a true and broad sense. But education ordinarily so called—the learning of trades and professions which is designed to enable men to earn their living, or to fit them for a particular station in life—is servile.

So much of what passes for education is simply learning to parrot back what one has heard. That, or to take as gospel what is written in a book. I don't think it requires any kind of conspiracy theories as to why people are subdued this like. It can be chalked up to human laziness. It's easier to say "because I said so" and to value obedience over intelligence.

People learn business theory as something that is eternal and unchanging. As if any human economy could be such a thing. The funny thing is that by teaching people what to say instead of how to think, we make their learning obsolete before it's even done. The most important thing to know how to do is ask questions - and recognize true answers.

a bag of gold around our necks

For a man to pride himself on this kind of wealth, as if it enriched him, is as ridiculous as if one struggling in the ocean with a bag of gold on his back should gasp out, “I am worth a hundred thousand dollars!” I see his ineffectual struggles just as plainly, and what it is that sinks him.

Isn't this just what's going on? It makes me think of petrodollars and the people who have them. Their very beachfront houses will be the first to sink beneath advancing waves. On a level closer to mine, I see people drowning in hurry. All the money they earn will never by back the time we squander. I'm trying to tie a lasso around time and slow it down to a pace that I can live with. It can't be that hard. It has to be easier that stressing out.

sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment

I always liked that Rumi saying, especially since it reminds me of a friend who I'm terrible about keeping in touch with, but would count her as one of the loveliest people I know.

Today's Thoreau blog uses botany as an example, but it seems that it would certainly be relevant to art, culture, everything. I think familiarity and observation have to precede theory. Would it be a disaster to reinvent the wheel for every generation? You end up having to anyway.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair’s breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany.

I remember taking a class on poetry at Harvard and another friend of mine, who wasn't a literature person at all, asked about explication and theory, "Isn't this kind of killing the poems?"

Theory can be very rewarding and provide interesting entryways into a text, but I still haven't decided.

buddhist thoreau?

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

I know that Thoreau and Emerson were familiar with some Eastern philosophy. I wonder at this entry and its parallel with the first noble truth. Life is suffering. Decay is endemic to life. I suppose that close observation of nature would inexorably lead one to the understanding of the cycle of life and death. And I don't mean the idea, but the visceral understanding.

What if everybody got to pull a Walden?

the royal month of august

One of my favorite things to look at online is Henry David Thoreau's blog. He has become something of a saint to me, iconic picture up on my wall and everything. Keep in mind that I come from a subversively polytheistic culture, so when I say that I mean it in quite a different way than most perhaps would.

So today he writes:

As my eye rested on the blossom of the meadow-sweet in a hedge, I heard the note of an autumnal cricket, and was penetrated with the sense of autumn. Was it sound? or was it form? or was it scent? or was it flavor? It is now the royal month of August. When I hear this sound, I am dry as the rye which is everywhere cut and housed, though I am drunk with the season’s wine.

I love the onset of late summer and one of its emblems for me has been the cricket. The word "sweltering" comes to mind when I hear it, though I don't really mean that it's just hot. There's a resignation that borders on oppression that I find oddly delicious, and I glad that Thoreau, too, wonders at the flavor of it. I feel less alone in my bizarre conclusions.