What kind of gift is life unless we have spirits to enjoy it and taste its true flavor?

August 10

Monday. 

P. M. —In Clintonia Swamp I see a remarkable yellow fungus about the base of some grass growing in a tuft. It is a jelly, shaped like a bodkin or a pumpkin’s stigma, two inches long, in vesting the base of the grass blades, a quarter to a half inch thick, tapering to the grass each way and covered _ with a sort of moist meal. It was strong-scented and disagreeable. 

Cat-tail commonly grows in the hollows and boggy places where peat has' been dug. 

How meanly and miserably we live for the most part!

We escape fate continually by the skin of our teeth, as the saying is. We are practically desperate. But as every man, in respect to material wealth, aims to be come independent or wealthy, so, in respect to our spirits and imagination, we should have some spare capital and superfluous vigor, have some margin and leeway in which to move. 

August 10, 2019, 8:41 PM

What kind of gift is life unless we have spirits to enjoy it and taste its true flavor? 

if, in respect to spirits, we are to be forever cramped and in debt? In our ordinary estate we have not, so to speak, quite enough air to breathe, and this poverty qualifies our piety; but we should have more than enough and breathe it carelessly. Poverty is the rule. 

We should first of all be full of vigor like a strong horse, and beside have the free and adventurous spirit of his driver; i. e., we should have such a reserve of elasticity and strength that we may at any time be able to put ourselves at the top of our speed and go beyond our ordinary limits, just as the invalid hires a horse. 

Have the gods sent us into this world, — to this muster, — to do chores, hold horses, and the like, and not given us any spending money? 

The poor and sick man keeps a horse, often a hostler; but the well man is a horse to himself, is horsed on himself; he feels his own oats. Look at the other’s shanks. How spindling! like the timber 'of his gig! 

First a sound and healthy life, and then spirits to live it with. 

I hear the neighbors complain sometimes about the peddlers selling their help false jewelry, as if they themselves wore true jewelry; but if their help pay as much for it as they did for theirs, then it is just as true jewelry as theirs, just as becoming to them and no more; for unfortunately it is the cost of the article and not the merits of the wearer that is considered. The money is just as well spent, and perhaps better earned. I don’t care how much false jewelry the peddlers sell, nor how many of the eggs which you steal are rotten. What, pray, is true jewelry? The hardened tear of a diseased clam, murdered in its old age. Is that fair play? If not, it is no jewel. The mistress wears this in her ear, while her help has one made of paste which you cannot tell from it. False jewelry! Do you know of any shop where true jewelry can be bought? I always look askance at a jeweller and wonder what church he can belong to. 

I heard some ladies the other day laughing about some one of their help who had helped herself to a real hoop from off a hogshead for her gown. I laughed too, but which party do you think I laughed at? Isn’t hogshead as good a word as crinoline?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 10, 1857

August 10. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau , August 10

 

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

A human entity

August 8

5 A.M. –– Awoke into a rosy fog.  

I was enveloped by the skirts of Aurora.

August 8, 2014

The small dewdrops rest on the Asclepias pulchra by the roadside like gems and the flower has lost half its beauty when they are shaken off,  

I only know myself as a human entity, the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections, and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.

No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1852 

Doubleness.  See A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:

"My life has been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and utter it."

Walden (Solitude) ("With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the steam, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes. ")  See also  

 

 I see my shadow

as a second person who 

sits down on this rock.

June 11, 1851 

August 17, 1851 ("How can that depth be fathomed where a man may see himself reflected?");  November 18, 1851 ("A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going."); April 28, 1860 (" Now that the hum of insects begins to be heard []You seem to have a great companion with you. . .  as if it were the noise of your own thinking.")

The tragedy of life - a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only. See December 15, 1852 ("But is this fact of "our life " commonly but a puff of air, a flash in the pan, a smoke, a nothing? It does not afford arena for a tragedy.")

Discovery/ perception of truth. See 2/27/1851 ("a novel and grand surprise, or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we had called knowledge before; an indefinite sense of the grandeur and glory of the universe.”); April 19 1852 ("How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. When the phenomenon was not observed, it was not at all. I think that no man ever takes an original or detects a principle, without experiencing an inexpressible, as quite infinite and sane, pleasure, which advertises him of the dignity of that truth he has perceived.”). See also September 4-7, 1851(" All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.”); September 24 1854("The perception of truth, as of the duration of time, etc., produces a pleasurable sensation”) November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it.”); January 5, 1860 ("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.”); August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it.")

"I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me…." Charles Darwin, Autobiography 99 (Norton paperback edition reissued 2005)

"It is impossible to solve a difficulty except by discovering a truth." Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

August 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 8

I am conscious of

my double to whom I am

a kind of fiction.

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 ©  2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-18520808