The season of the cricket: expressions of a mind in repose.

July 7.

July 7, 2013

Only thought which is expressed by the mind in repose - as it were, lying on its back and contemplating the heavens - is adequately and fully expressed. The writer expressing his thought must be as well seated as the astronomer contemplating the heaven; he must not occupy a constrained position. He must be well poised upon the facts, the experience, that secures his whole attention! All the faculties in repose but the one you are using, the whole energy concentrated in that.

Knowledge does not come to us by details but by lieferungs from the gods. As the whole body of a child is one sense, taking physical pleasure in riding on a rail, so does the unsophisticated mind derive an inexpressible pleasure from the simplest exercise of thoughts. I express adequately only the thought which I love to express.

It is a mark of serenity and health of mind when a person hears the sound of the cricket. Be ever so little distracted, your thoughts so little confused, your engagements so few, your attention so free, your existence so mundane, that in all places and in all hours you can hear the sound of crickets in those seasons when they are to be heard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 7, 1851

Thought which is expressed by the mind in repose  cf. Wordsworth  ("emotion recollected in tranquility")

As the whole body of a child is one sense, See Walden ("Solitude")('This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself.')

The writer expressing his thought must be . . . well poised upon the facts, the experience, that secures his whole attention! . . . I express adequately only the thought which I love to express. See August 19, 1851 ("How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!"); September 2, 1851 ("Expression is the act of the whole man. . . A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.”); September 4-7, 1851 (“I feel that the juices of the fruits which I have eaten, the melons and apples, have ascended to my brain and are stimulating it. They give me a heady force. Now I can write.”); November 9, 1851 ("Facts to tell who I am, and where I have been or what I have thought. . . Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal."); November 1, 1851 (First of all a man must see, before he can say . . . taste the world and digest it . . . As you see, so at length will you say . . .expressed as more deeply seen, with deeper references; so that the hearer or reader . . . be in a sense translated in order to understand them; when the truth respecting his things shall naturally exhale from a man like the odor of the muskrat from the coat of the trapper. At first blush a man is not capable of reporting truth; he must be drenched and saturated with it first.");  February 10, 1852 ("Write while the heat is in you.")

It is a mark of serenity and health of mind when a person hears the sound of the cricket. See May 27, 1859 ("A peculiarity of these days is the first hearing of the crickets' creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. No greater event transpires now. It is the most interesting piece of news to be communicated, yet it is not in any newspaper."); May 22, 1854 (“ Only in their saner moments do men hear the crickets. . . .A quire has begun which pauses not for any news, for it knows only the eternal.”); June 1, 1856 (“Was soothed and cheered by I knew not what at first, but soon detected the now more general creak of crickets”); June 4, 1857 ( “the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity. It is time now to bring our philosophy out of doors.”); June 13, 1851 ("I listen to the ancient, familiar, immortal, dear cricket sound under all others, and as these cease I become aware of the general earth-song.”); .June 17, 1852 ("The earth-song of the cricket ! Before Christianity was, it is. Health! health! health! is the burden of its song . . .When we hear that sound of the crickets in the sod, the world is not so much with us."); July 14, 1851 ("The creaking of the crickets seems at the very foundation of all sound. At last I cannot tell it from a ringing in my ears. It is a sound from within, not without. You cannot dispose of it by listening to it. In proportion as I am stilled I hear it. It reminds me that I am a denizen of the earth."); July 16, 1851 (" the cricket is heard under all sounds.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in Spring; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August