The sameness of now that is always new.

Reading my journal from a year ago I am reminded  of Thoreau's statement that  a man tracks himself through life; that one can understand only what one already knows --  and can know only what one ceases to  understand: I  have stumbled on something i had forgotten. 

It is a reference to the "sameness of now."   An opaque but  obviously important  discussion of the nature of the present moment. The sameness of now / the strangeness of now.  Sheep. 

Thoreau deliberately getting lost.  Turn around with eyes closed he says and, lost, one is confronted with the vastness – and otherness –of nature.

HDT 160 years ago today is out in the sun looking at the changing colors light and shade of pine needles on a breezy warm winter day.

To get out and observe for myself.  

Zphx, 20120204

But first here are the quotes:

A man receives only what he is ready to receive. His observations make a chain. He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.

            Journal, January 5, 1860

I do not see what these things can be. I begin to see ... an object when I cease to understand it and see that I did not realize or appreciate it before, but I get no further than this. 
        Journal November 21, 1850

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see.   
         Journal, February 14, 1851

It is not till we are completely lost, or turned around, --for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, --do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.

Journal, March 29, 1853

... a mode of knowledge that consists of the chronic presence of change, chronic loss-- loss of chronology-- all within the sameness of every now, repetition of the now, the sameness of now that is always new.

Una Chaudhuri,Land/scape/theater, p366

It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.
EB White