Interlude
July 13, 2009
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
(I took these photos in Craig the day before my dad died. The passage in the center is from Thoreau’s Walden, a book that my dad had ordered online sometime last month.)
August 1, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Dear Brittany,
Walden is such a wonderful book, it is a great friend you can turn to again and again. It is wonderful your Dad was thinking about it because I think it is a book about the quest for the meaning of life, and that is revealing about who your Dad was.
For some years now I always take my battered copy of Walden with me to the graduation ceremonies; I can’t stand the speeches, though I do like to applaud the students, that’s the only reason I go. And while the ceremony drones on I read some more pages from Walden, often at random. And I take more notes on it. So many great lines, here are a couple that I really like:
“He was soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence implied.” (p. 234)
“You can always see a face in the fire.” (228)
“Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins whose gardens cemeteries… with such reminiscences I repeopled the woods and lulled myself to sleep.” (237)
“…I occasionally observed that he was thinking for himself, and expressing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare that I would any day walk ten miles to observe it…” (136)
“If [Quoil] had lived I should have made him fight his battles over again. His trade here was that of a ditcher. Napoleon went to St. Helena; Quoil came to Walden Woods… He was a man of manners, like one who had seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech than you could attend to.” (235)
There are so many great lines and strong sentiments, on almost every page you could open by chance; and every time you open it you can think of your Dad and bring him back.
Terrence