When you dream of an ideal space to do what you do best, what does it look like, sound like, and feel like? What is done there? Who is with you? Does it look like this?
A white-blue sky. Clouds rise, billowing into the heights. Far off, a single bird wheels above clear, green water. On either side are tall cedars and spruce. They stand at the water’s edge, brooding over the forgotten years and bending to glance thoughtfully at the waves. The waves slip up to kiss their feet and spill tiny energy into the earth.
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As written yesterday - Thoreau was tuned to nuances in life that most of us pass without noticing. More than that, he recorded the observations and, by the account of many others, he regularly revisited and rewrote those tiny tales. Below is a gentle nod to the curiousity of young men:
“I had gone but little way on the old Carlisle road when I saw Brooks Clark, who is now about eighty and bent like a bow, hastening along the road, barefooted, as usual, with an axe in his hand; was in haste perhaps on account of the cold wind on his bare feet.
When he got up to me, I saw that besides the axe in one hand, he had his shoes in the other, filled with knurly apples and a dead robin. He stopped and talked with me a few moments; said that we had had a noble autumn and might now expect some cold weather.
I asked if he had found the robin dead. No, he said, he found it with its wing broken and killed it. He also added that he had found some apples in the woods, and as he had n’t anything to carry them in, he put ‘em in his shoes. They were queer-looking trays to carry fruit in. How many he got in along toward the toes, I don’t know. I noticed, too, that his pockets were stuffed with them. His old tattered frock coat was hanging in strips about the skirts, as were his pantaloons about his naked feet. He appeared to have been out on a scout this gusty afternoon, to see what he could find, as the youngest boy might. Continue Reading »
Today my son is 568 days old. He runs like a champ, throws a mean pitch, and can jump clear off the floor. Just barely approaching two-years he already opens doors (and slams them), can tell you everything that’s hot in the house, has favorite foods which he demands by name and he knows trucks, planes, and heavy machinery by sound which he exuberantly mimics. He can climb stairs standing, recognize his reflection, spot a plane at 300 feet, call dogs, put simple puzzles together, empty a box of raisins in seconds, and understand almost every simple verbal phrase.
We haven’t intentionally taught him any of this. He just figured it out. And almost every single one of these achievements is a consequence of observation.
While I trot blithely through life, he is paying attention.
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It’s been surprising how much people have resonated with the canoe trip stories. Not just the “week away” part … actually, not that part at all.
Interest has been in the expression of that trip. The emerging strength of the experience. They want raw.
I only noticed because my wife would like to go somewhere warm next month. Somewhere with beaches, nice rooms, and inclusive drinks. Mexico, Bahamas, etc.
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From the Thoreau blog:
“Thinking this afternoon of the prospect of my writing lectures and going abroad to read them the next winter. I realized how incomparably great the advantages of obscurity and poverty which I have enjoyed so long (and may still perhaps enjoy). I thought with what more than princely, with what poetical, leisure I had spent my years hitherto, without care or engagement, fancy-free. I have given myself up to nature; I have lived so many springs and summers and autumns and winters as if I had nothing else to do but live them, and imbibe whatever nutriment they had for me; I have spent a couple of years, for instance, with the flowers chiefly, having none other so binding engagement as to observe when they opened; I could have afforded to spend a whole fall observing the changing tints of the foliage. Ah, how I have thriven on solitude and poverty! I cannot overstate this advantage. I do not see how I could have enjoyed it, if the public had been expecting as much of me as there is danger now that they will. If I go abroad lecturing, how shall I ever recover the lost winter?”
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From the Thoreau blog:
“The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.
I omit the usual—the hurricanes and earthquakes—and describe the common. This has the greatest charm and is the true theme of poetry. You may have the extraordinary for your province, if you will let me have the ordinary. Give me the obscure life, the cottage of the poor and humble, the workdays of the world, the barren fields, the smallest share of all things but poetic perception. Give me but the eyes to see the things which you possess.”
From the Thoreau blog: