a cabin in the misty mountains

"Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it breathes its own breath over again; their shadows morning and evening reach farther than their daily steps. We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experiences and character."

Henry David Thoreau

"Baker Farm"

Walden

 

I dream of such things.

dear world,

"The shower was now over, and a rainbow above the eastern woods promised a fair evening; so I took my departure."

(Henry David Thoreau, "Baker Farm," Walden)

I'm having a really hard time writing at all right now in my life. My once computer musings have introverted themselves into pages of a journal I keep by my bed. Last night I turned all the lights out and laid down to sleep, but my hot-wired brain kept going so I switched on my lamp and wrote and wrote until I ran out of lines on the page and then could finally sleep. I always intend to type those pre-snooze thoughts the next morning, clean them up for general consumption, share them here maybe, but then the selfish devil inside me says, "No, those are for the paper only" and I have to relent.

I wonder what kinds of things are nurtured when you bottle thoughts like jams and jellies and store them to open later. I'll tell you one thing that happens: shelves and shelves of journals. "And I could write a song a hundred miles long."

I will say this: I am content beyond belief right now. I am happy with who I am. I am happy with the direction my life is taking. I am happy with the decisions I am making day-to-day and the decisions I've made year-to-year, especially the ones I didn't understand in the moment but that have somehow grown important and kind things inside my heart. I am happy with my relationships. I am happy with how I spend my time.

I am happy that today two people talked to me about doing their wedding photography.

:)

And tomorrow is another clean white page, and I get to punch holes in it and turn it into lace. And this hope for the morning brings me cozy thoughts when right now I nestle in my bed with Henry David and a cup of water and ponder the night away.

Seredipitously yours.

what Henry says

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."

--Henry David Thoreau, "What I Lived For," Walden