Yesterday...

I read this at friend Sparrow's spot:

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... from Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Later, I read this at Mrs. M-mv's spot:

The "Let's Go! Let's Go! Hurry UP! Go, Go, Go!" mentality that pervades our business transactions and the Power Point school of presentation and the five-paragraph view of the world that governs our post-baccalaureate "education" have slowly stripped us of the ability to savor language. To read. To think. To learn. To hold a Great Conversation. And to synthesize all that we're learning. To reconcile it with the life we lead.

And the life we want to lead.

Steve Almond (Candyfreak) describes this well: "The unexamined life, it might be said, offers an extraordinary profit margin."

Ayup.

Just before leaving, this arrived from Dover:


A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
by Henry David Thoreau

I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is made; the weeds at the bottom gently bending down the stream, shaken by the watery wind, still planted where their seeds had sunk, but ere long to die and go down likewise; the shining pebbles, not yet anxious to better their condition, the chips and weeds, and occasional logs and stems of trees, that floated past, fulfilling their fate, were objects of singular interest to me, and at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom, and float whither it would bear me.

Seven hours later, I was here:




All five children were off in boats, my husband was napping on the couch, and the kind host of our invasion was returning his grandson home. I could hear the water lapping, the laughter of my children from far across the lagoon, and the flap of the ducks' wings as they made their evening rounds. I sat, mesmerized by the flickers of light on the surface of the water, and I listened as complete thoughts rolled back and forth and around again in my mind. No "hurry, hurry", no check-off list to work through, only a snatch of quiet minutes for thinking and dreaming and noticing.