Expecting the Hunter's Azalea

Augustine deduced, logically, from the existence of an infinite past and an infinite future, that the present moment must also be an infinity.

In today's journal entry, which I have extensively reorganized, Thoreau explains why the infinite present has its peculiar vibrancy. [The Hunter;s Azalea and  The Significance of the Hunter's Azalea]

What distinguishes past from future? Have we not all experienced the sameness of now? The endless repetition of the infinite past. "What is new?" one is asked, and "Same old same old..." is one's reply.

What is the present moment?

Today, May 31, 1853, Thoreau explains that the experience of novelty  is a matter of practice and discipline. Expect the unexpected and, paradoxically, the moment arrives in harmony, "perfectly in keeping with my life and characteristic."

Only a detailed study of the flowering plants of Concord, together with the right openness or receptiveness – what Thoreau calls "My subjective philosophy"  -- leads to the realization that the hunter's Azalea is new.

The strangeness of now. The unexpected recognized as such. This present moment. Stunning and strange. And significant: "Events my imagination prepares me for, no matter how incredible."

Time is a vibration impelling the future to actuality. The future is  distinguished from the past, now, only by relaxed attention to the unexpected present. Seeing without looking. Understanding without knowing.

"The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations." ~Zphx 20130531

See May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant"); November 18, 1851 ("The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work. (Mem. Wordsworth's observations on relaxed attention.)"); April 18, 1852 ("Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature, make a day to bring forth something new?")

May 31. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 31

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

https://tinyurl.com/HDTnow