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Utopia 234

Full of Grace 234 ...  Tuesday Child

Okasan2... Tamiko

Shashisan - Sexy

ascendThursday - Camp Thirsty

these weird things, i am making, they seem so uniquely complimentary to my overall theme which is, as you know, a deep dark secret ...  everybody knows but the-last-one-to-know

what a stupid thing to say, and how it yells at me
the first amendment took a lot of hits 

a lot of hits

and for what?

so that they can be forthcoming on the evidence
which was all illegal until last Friday

otherwise they wouldn't have to argue about whether or not their plaintiff was unwilling to stand trial, what does that look like?  legally

and off they went running... what does that look like?

let the prudes begin 

what will we do about this?

well there she was puking out the car door while her friends were off breaking into clubhouses and stealing jerseys and she didn't want to get caught

social justice

they told her how they would find gays down by the river in the park and they would beat the shit out of them for fun

some greek words are just so annoying

this is not like the guy who killed the neighbor's dog and posted it on fb
he was not dog phobic
it was long ago and far away and the world was younger than today
this was  before Madonna kissed Britney

THE CIVIL WAR is still resonating in this land.  Look at the poor South.  She was starved and then raped.  And she took it out on the poor slaves who were just left there at their mercy.  Those who had known no mercy from Lincoln.  They shot him before he might have.  I wonder if he would have?

And so history is always showing her face.  Perhaps history is strong in some places than in others.  And always, when it comes to this colonial war of rebellion, some of the states had a much harder time of it, and the worse Life was for them, the more the former slaves had to suffer for it ...  Missouri actually had a Confederate government and she was not allowed to secede from The Union side of the Mason/Dixon and there were a lot of mercenaries sent out there to keep them under martial law, exactly what also happened in Maryland for the same reasoning, since The District of Columbia was sandwiched between two confederate congresses, Maryland's entire government was simply put under house arrest and stayed there for four years,  this caused not a little bit of trouble with the Baltimore railroad which was the most direct path for new recruits from New England, heading to The District, so the war was being fought on the streets and in their hearts and in The Union all of what is called JimCrow which was Legal Racism, lot of skirmishes and they lots of folks never did quite get over it. Faulkner covered them.  And before him, Sam Clemens from Hannibal admits to being a Confederate soldier for a little while there.

Each State had a great deal more of sovereignity which was what was really lost in The Civil War, a much stronger republic was born with the abolishment of slavery, too bad they couldn't abolish the racism that caused it too.

At that time, in Kentucky, the we'ren't having either side, and said you all stay out.  We have nothing to do with any of this, i.e., the Union and The Confederates may not use Kentucky as a battleground.  It didn't stop them but it did delay them a bit.

Yes, The Civil War is still hanging heavily over America's head.  Elsewhere this issue takes on many faces.  A certain physician was taken aback when he was travelling abroad and could not enter a restaurant because he was white.  It was an object lesson that really brought the whole thing home to him in ways that being there, having that done to him.

While far out west, there were no United States, there was just a lot of territory about to be stolen from the people who lived on it.

We are still, to this day, answerable for a difference between America and Europe that holds in our mutually exclusive jurisdictions. Europeans have to prove they tried to get away from the scene of the crime.  Americans just have to prove we are defending ourself.  Under Parliamentary rules, your lawyer cannot defend you if he knows you're guilty.  The Constitution says you've a right to a defense.  There is a long history of defending the right to lie in America.  perhaps another bLog will benefit from some research into what ended up being repealed , like the one about Africans being some fraction of human.


I just don't see how this document can be the basis of the entire system.  The Napoleonic Code is legal in The States but it is hardly ever used.  The States are US.  This is what they say, they don't say America, that is entirely our own self-referential denial of our AmerEuropean dominance ... it is a white supremacy and it is because of guns that it is so... so while the Christians do feel somewhat confused at the outcome of things they do not at the same time make the connection between The Lord their saving grace, the one and only Messiah himself, they don't see that he was the first one who come out and said "Might don't make it right."  And see, even Christians have lost sight of that one thing.  And well because we're afraid.  Even the intimid are not as intrepid as they have to make each other think they are.  There is this whole fraternity thing going on with strong loyaltys and you would think they would choose the better part but it becomes more difficult the more money is involved in doing business as reveneur

getting organized

originally this was just about my niece
and then it grew into what sells
and then one for my grandmother
and segued into my biggest project, utopia

and what else
all like the rest of it
completely not part of a whole
just fragments
which makes them precious

and also counting backwards from june 16 you get to cinco de mayo
not that anyone cares

so there would be how many altogether

7 one two three four five six
what would seven be?

it's a starting place
and then each of them
those three makes nine
and then those two make eleven

an almost perfect number
to my mind
and i am the lost sheep

this is not a poem this is notes to myself

How I Stopped Loving The French To Bits and Learned To Like The British A Little Bit

Windsor
right through the tunnel
and we never had to worry about getting pulled over and searched
whereas our friends had to pull out their ID as they were driving up
it wasn't random
sometimes Mom had to show her alien card
yep
it was just across the river that flowed about 100 yards from my front door
they used to race to Chicago
and what else?

oh yes they had two languages over there
everything was writ in French & English

Dixie.  That's a ten dollar bill.  Dix is on the other side of it.  From when then Kentucks used to flatbed to the oceangoing in New Orleans where the currency was in French and the code was Napoleonic

no property tax
that Napoleonic code
it has it's advantages
and Louisiana has more accents than New York city
when the French had to evacuate Arcadia
Amherst had red coats overrun the royal mountain.
and all was lost, so they fled, portaged around the niagara, and went through the eerie lake of the happy hunting grounds
where they floated their loved ones downriver to
and was at that time occupied by a fiercely insulted tribe of Iroquois who had lost all of their oceanfront property to the Europeans
and who were not taking it well

upriver through de troit

Or Or How I Learned To Stop Being So Crazy About The French

and
Not Mind The English So Much

Because at the end of the day… it is all about the language you use

It's all about the people you meet

It's all about the places you go

The things you do don’t matter at the end of the day

The touch of magic is not active— it is as passive as The Great Wide Big Sky Of The Ring of Fire— also known as The Pacific now that’s irony!  

Dying people talk good talk, they no longer have any reason not to.

To bLog that is not the question is … and why you ask?

Cannot ask reasons— there are many and they carry different weights.

I'm not trying to be an intellectual here I'm telling you what

To think which is what you is doing when reading

When you are with me you understand better because the ear is so sensitive gets the earliest intelligence.  

And how could it not be?

Logging is like making yourself into a Language once removed and for What? For the Future!

When Leslie discovered that Queen Elizabeth pardoned the man who slew Christopher Marlowe in a month that was a hot day during WWI when Wilson finally showed up… for Mr. Researcher painstakingly reading each individual entry of the documentation of ElizabethRex

England has historical resources.  

When we look back to the Americans we go as far as Maya and then there is a huge gap in the fabric, the rest is unwritten.  

Boswell— the great biographer— who gave us Samuel Johnson forever to love— well—

*have to tell you— those 18th century people were over the top!

Voltaire said god is dying! God riddance?!

Before Friedrich was the candlelight in their gaze.  

you know— you can do this much— you can tell.  

Im telling u this automatical capitalization of my first personality conjugation of the directive of the office of creation in order to print legibly according to editors

Oh those editors

They sure do keep their jobs don't they!

And the rest of The Whose Who During The 18th Century

Voltaire managed The Enlightened.

He might be subject to The Ruler but the jury was out.  The tide had begun to turn.

To actually make a super successful career out of it and brought down the house in Paris when he died

you got all dollyd-up for one of his plays now it is a masterpiece of showmanship and so dated that it would cause an audience to watch dumbfounded before they walked out some looking bewildered— some looking awed— some looking baffled— none of them happy.

What you see

Is what you get

What you see

Is what you get

Hume was an old buddy old pal of Voltaire.

Frederick the Great opened up his palace to him with a stipend for as long as Voltaire cared to be his guest.

Heinrich was there but he was not one of them,

*better check my dates he might have been with Chopin and Austin

As were Mozart then Beethoven and The House of Hanover spoke German in Buckingham Palace— the Empire was besieged.

Frederick of Prussia fought Russia to the East— The Holy Roman Empire to the South— The French to the West and the Scandinavians to the North

He was surrounded by The Alliance

He carried a vial of poison to do himself in rather than be captured.

So did Napoleon

Napoleon cancelled The French Revolution

He left with hundreds of thousands of troops for Moscow and came back with less than 1000?  

And Rousseau picked up Antoine's baton and scurried off with it— and he missed his children and he missed his children and he missed his children and he couldn’t believe what a selfish young man he had been and he couldn’t believe that he had made Therese chose between them and still— he was after all Rousseau who single handedly told The Age of Enlightenment that they were unenlightened— they had increased the darkness that had left all the Romance out and thanks to Jean Jacque— the funny little Frenchman— Cortez came to stand silent on the peak of Darien— with his men gaping.

Could be worse

Couldn't be.

Than Who?

#2

Cooky

Wincing

Bleeding

Important

you

It capitalizes every sentence

This is bizarre.

And yet intriguing.

What is the best letter in calligraphy?

Some would say

D

But

*would say

W

Two

Two

Two

U

In

One  

When im doing my transcription at 100 mph and

*know already when

*look up all the spelling errors have been second guessed— those word combinations are being amassed in small microscopic refridgerators where they keep the sentencing in cold storage— kind of like our cruel and unusual not to mention extremely bizarre prisons

So

*do that

I look up

There on the screen before me as

*fiddled away at the keys

*have produced an almost perfect document as if unintentionally and

*think how they decipher the charts for each other and how secret code acronyms and then the code blue is the charity and the code red is the punishment, why do you not take the blue pill? Because you are afraid of how deep the rabbithole goes…

The computer has been racing after me

It is not going to let that happen!  Meanwhile back at the keyboard there

*am working working working blah blah and stinky winky pinky drinky inky binky finky ja duh ja duh ya ya ya blah work such as it is and DEN… this used to be done on typewriters mind you on paper so you got a one shot deal at getting it right and the thing is the boss saw so many broken freakin knees shoulders and feet not to mention hands— it gets redunkulous and the only reason the British don’t commit mass suicide is because they say to themselves hey at least we're carpenters of skeletons

When people get United seems like they are always united against something

Okay so why do the British like themselves? Because they like to be against the superficial

They really don’t know the meaning of the word gauche.

The little dears…

Chabby Shic is too easy to love

This is why Jesus said Love everyone

Good thing he didn't say Like everyone

That’s what Martin said

I wanna be Bobby's girl

I wanna be Bobby's girl

Ethel is the luckiest

Fred and Ethel and then all the rest of the clan

Keep your chin up

Oh how the mighty have fallen! And you too Kristen

uRock  

And

*want to switch back to the time when this code wasn’t chasing behind me even if it meant that

*had to get it right the first time— no retakes— no mistakes

there it all is in the charts in Gregg scribble, where acronyms capitals and the doctor completely understand the shorthand— so why don’t we use it— and

*asked them— is this so difficult? The secret language of rotation revealed!

CTD

Circling the Drain… draining, it can be so draining… we are all so overwhelmed by it all…  

The world of acronym is available at the keyboard come children come to the keyboard qwertboard come come and find out for yourself it is the 8 ball come to life just look and you should find seek and it shall be opened to you this screen is the door come come in come into a world where no one can ever hold a gun to your head they have to come and find you to get you— here you are just a voice a voice like Emily and henry oh what a henry you can be if you write what you think

The lord high commander hath said thou shalt sing what she meant was life is really a musical and yuns are really REALLY bad at it and then she said and When it comes to pass that the singing is perfected by the melody and it has a groovy backbeat that is easy to dance to thou shalt dance to it

Don’t tell me you cant dance

There is no such animal as cant dance

you just listen to the music

you can close your eyes but you cant stop hearing me

you cant stop hearing me.

Never mind

Im working on my comedy routine.

It stars out im talking about really horrible things and not laughing at them

But saying im laughing

Real funny

Not a bit of hysteria whatsoever

Steven Wright is my hero fosho

Fosho Fukagawa

And what is the name of that singing group?

Grog

Really it is gwog but they are all so drunk they can't pronounce it

The BBC got it so right

They got it so right

Yes

*think

*really overcame my distaste for The Empire when

*fell in Love with emForster

Funny how those self-imposed exiles are excellent writers

youinafter  The Artist of the first part is a liberal by definition meaning generous.  

They can say rape feels good a million times but Webster would label it irony and makes you a sane man just because you know what

*am talking about.

Do i love what she did to Mansfield Park? its like a miracle!

And persuasion, she blossoms like a flower in a dream

*think she did end up killing herself afterall

Some people never discover their sensibility which is a far more intelligent guide than the unreliable intellect relying on trial and error and pros and cons— and never quite sure in their minds— and the righteous always willing to say that they have the right reasons

In The Empire the right reasons ended up a bloody mess so no wonder

*hated them

Killer is Courage.

How do they have the guts to be that godawful?

The French had their own bloody mess too.

The Rights of Man was their saving grace en effet

Parliament is like an endless work in progress that has reached the postmodern phase of not making a big fuss about it.  

In the 18th century the continent across the atlantic that turned out not to be the far east was being conquered by Europeans— the Dutch went peacefully and the Americans got an excellent impression of wonderful people— as the dutch most certainly are and then the empire came in with its guns and the French came in with the canoes and you see the French loved the Americans and the English feared the Americans

Where ever you see a gun you see a bully simple as that or someone who knows that bullys must be stopped by becoming just like them— and then everyone has their own bully team— this is such an indigenous fact of existence that it is a miracle that children who do not come from the streets do not ever really know until their dying day that they are bullys themselves— and the ones that want to be— this is their big excuse— and the intellect being the ridiculous conceited thing that it is says oh im right

The reason I don’t like myself is that I am an Islander.  I understand Nazis. They are everywhere! And what's worse! They are proud of it.  This makes the fact that I huge part of how I feel as a parent is a part of the 7 deadlies, it must the Doc, the helpful dwarf and not Grumpy, the hostile.  

People hurt themselves so much that this guys sees a river of injury day after day year after year see you in the operating room and they think to themselves what a bunch of knucklehaeds

Day after day.

Im typing along the xray shows a broken wire—

*think that’s kind of cool the knee healed around it. It would actually be good to have fluids put into your joints like you do your tranny

Orthopaedics see idiot after idiot after idiot— all day everyday and

*type up their letters to each other who are also caring for the same idiot and saying what an idiot the anatomy does strange thinks when you take up sports and even more bizarre things when you take up dance and then try the military not to mention the most common malady— overuse stress fractures where someone is getting paid to wear out their limb the doc can hardly blame the guy for letting the compensation kick in

Broadcasting

Every thing gets watered down over time— not because anything has actually changed but just because the pool turns into an ocean and we are all flounders floundering unless you are edible with claws— when hans Christian Andersen saw the mermaid dancing in the harbor (what harbor) google question!  Omg on-line

*can fill my blog with links! This is going to be funny

Ok

So

Where was

*

Oh yes— the creator of these people

All these people

The ugly duckling

Who else

Another thing to google for (im on a bun)

you know you want to go! Who else DID he create

you will remember

you will remember

Remembering is a milestone.

And

*asked her perfectly honestly Why would he not want you?

Now go control A and then find & replace whatever you want!

*will replace you with youR NAME HERE watch this!  

So now its your turn to fill in the blank

It really isn’t a blank but hume said it is nonetheless best to start with a blank

And lord Salisbury said we have to start where we are

Him being afraid the house of lords was going to cease to be hereditary which guess what tony blair successful changed big mistake— it is impossible to tell yet but

*can tell you this in the Eisenhower administration … well what if we really used the constitution politically the election systems is virtually nullified and everyone waves it like it is even in practice any more— it was real back then— its just an ideal now— we are responsible for making it real and we are doing one lousy job at it

And educator was complaining about the school system and overheard him in a coffee shop and it is so hard for me to keep my big mouth shut— the topic was the school system the logic was entirely missing the subject was funding

Why don’t the bankers just change it? They are like Lord Salisbury— why on earth would we just hand over to you what you are so willingly handing over to us?  

WINDSOR MORNING

one thing is certain, if you talk the thing into the ground, which is to say if you go to the kitchen table determined to map out territory you will come away with a plan and all of the principles should emerge during the dialogue slash discussion slash argument slash little chat as long as all partys theretofore and inafter, inasmuch and insofar as they must make a commitment to look at all their options and consider all their reasons and arrive at all their conclusions together, as a whole, logically and without prefix of any kind
Windsor
right through the tunnel
and we never had to worry about getting pulled over and searched
whereas our friends had to pull out their ID as they were driving up
it wasn't random
sometimes Mom had to show her alien card
yep
it was just across the river that flowed about 100 yards from my front door
they used to race to Chicago
and what else?

oh yes they had two languages over there
everything was writ in French & English

Dixie.  That's a ten dollar bill.  Dix is on the other side of it.  From when then Kentucks used to flatbed to the oceangoing in New Orleans where the currency was in French and the code was Napoleonic

no property tax
that Napoleonic code
it has it's advantages
and Louisiana has more accents than New York city
when the French had to evacuate Arcadia
Amherst had red coats overrun the royal mountain.
and all was lost, so they fled, portaged around the niagara, and went through the eerie lake of the happy hunting grounds
where they floated their loved ones downriver to
and was at that time occupied by a fiercely insulted tribe of Iroquois who had lost all of their oceanfront property to the Europeans
and who were not taking it well

upriver through de troit

Ralph on Henry 1862 The Atlantic

is this #2 ?

in his tribute to his brother? twin son of different mothers?  he sort of makes it sound like Henry did not benefit from the pencil factory but the truth is, he was independently wealthy and never actually had to whet out a living by the sweat of his brow, he did it as only an ivy can

he became tutor for The Emersons

AUG 1862

Henry David Thoreau was the last male descendant of a French ancestor who came to this country from the Isle of Guernsey. His character exhibited occasional traits drawn from this blood in singular combination with a very strong Saxon genius.

He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 12th of July, 1817. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1837, but without any literary distinction. An iconoclast in literature, he seldom thanked colleges for their service to him, holding them in small esteem, whilst yet his debt to them was important. After leaving the University, he joined his brother in teaching a private school, which he soon renounced. His father was a manufacturer of lead-pencils, and Henry applied himself for a time to this craft, believing he could make a better pencil than was then in use. After completing his experiments, he exhibited his work to chemists and artists in Boston, and having obtained their certificates to its excellence and to its equality with the best London manufacture, he returned home contented. His friends congratulated him that be had now opened his way to fortune. But he replied, that he should never make another pencil. “Why should I? I would not do again what I have done once.” He resumed his endless walks and miscellaneous studies, making every day some new acquaintance with Nature, though as yet never speaking of zoology or botany, since, though very studious of natural facts, he was incurious of technical and textual science.

At this time, a strong, healthy youth, fresh from college, whilst all his companions were choosing their profession, or eager to begin some lucrative employment, it was inevitable that his thoughts should be exercised on the same question, and it required rare decision to refuse all the accustomed paths, and keep his solitary freedom at the cost of disappointing the natural expectations of his family and friends: all the more difficult that he had a perfect probity, was exact in securing his own independence, and in holding every man to the like duty. But Thoreau never faltered. He was a born protestant. He declined to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living well. If he slighted and defied the opinions of others, it was only that he was more intent to reconcile his practice with his own belief. Never idle or self-indulgent, he preferred, when he wanted money, earning it by some piece of manual labor agreeable to him, as building a boat or a fence, planting, grafting; surveying, or other short work, to any long engagements. With his hardy habits and few wants, his skill in wood-craft, and his powerful arithmetic, he was very competent to live in any part of the world. It would cost him less time to supply his wants than another. He was therefore secure of his leisure.

A natural skill for mensuration, growing out of his mathematical knowledge, and his habit of ascertaining the measures and distances of objects which interested him, the size of trees, the depth and extent of ponds and rivers, the height of mountains, and the air-line distance of his favorite summits,—this, and his intimate knowledge of the territory about Concord, made him drift into the profession of land-surveyor. It had the advantage for him that it led him continually into new and secluded grounds, and helped his studies of Nature. His accuracy and skill in this work were readily appreciated, and he found all the employment he wanted.

He could easily solve the problems of the surveyor, but he was daily beset with graver questions, which he manfully confronted. He interrogated every custom, and wished to settle all his practice on an ideal foundation. He was a protestant à l’outrance, and few lives contain so many renunciations. He was bred to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. He chose, wisely, no doubt, for himself, to be the bachelor of thought and Nature. He had no talent for wealth, and knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelegance. Perhaps he fell into his way of living without forecasting it much, but approved it with later wisdom. “I am often reminded,” he wrote in his journal, “that, if 1 had bestowed on me the wealth of Croesus, my aims must be still the same, and my means essentially the same.” He had no temptations to fight against, –no appetites, no passions, no taste for elegant trifles. A fine house, dress, the manners and talk of highly cultivated people were all thrown away on him. He much preferred a good Indian, and considered these refinements as impediments to conversation, wishing to meet his companion on the simplest terms. He declined invitations to dinner-parties, because there each was in every one’s way, and he could not meet the individuals to any purpose. “They make their pride,” he said, “in making their dinner cost much; I make my pride in making my dinner cost little.” When asked at table what dish he preferred, he answered, “The nearest.” He did not like the taste of wine, and never had a vice in his life. He said,—”I have a faint recollection of pleasure derived from smoking dried lily-stems, before I was a man. I had commonly a supply of these. I have never smoked anything more noxious.”

He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them himself. In his travels, he used the railroad only to get over so much country as was unimportant to the present purpose, walking hundreds of miles, avoiding taverns, buying a lodging in farmers’ and fishermen’s houses, as cheaper, and more agreeable to him, and because there he could better find the men and the information he wanted.

There was somewhat military in his nature not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full exercise. It cost him nothing to say No; indeed, he found it much easier than to say Yes. It seemed as if his first instinct on hearing a proposition was to controvert it, so impatient was he of the limitations of our daily thought. This habit, of course, is a little chilling to the social affections; and though the companion would in the end acquit him of any malice or untruth, yet it mars conversation. Hence, no equal companion stood in affectionate relations with one so pure and guileless. “I love Henry,” said one of his friends, but I cannot like him; and as for taking his arm, I should as soon think of taking the arm of an elm-tree.”

Yet, hermit and stoic as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of young people whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and river. And he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a search for chestnuts or grapes. Talking, one day, of a public discourse, Henry remarked, that whatever succeeded with the audience was bad. I said, “Who would not like to write something which all can read, like ‘Robinson Crusoe’? and who does not see with regret that his page is not solid with a right materialistic treatment, which delights everybody?” Henry objected, of course, and vaunted the better lectures which reached only a few persons. But, at supper, a young girl, understanding that he was to lecture at the Lyceum, sharply asked him, “whether his lecture would be a nice, interesting story, such as she wished to hear, or whether it was one of those old philosophical things that she did not care about.” Henry turned to her, and bethought himself, and, I saw, was trying to believe that he had matter that might fit her and her brother, who were to sit up and go to the lecture, if it was a good one for them.

He was a speaker and actor of the truth,—born such,- and was ever running into dramatic situations from this cause. In any circumstance, it interested all bystanders to know what part Henry would take, and what he would say; and be did not disappoint expectation, but used an original judgment on each emergency. In 1845 he built himself a small framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native and fit for him. No one who knew him would tax him with affectation. He was more unlike his neighbors in his thought than in his action. As soon as he had exhausted the advantages of that solitude, he abandoned it. In 1847, not approving some uses to which the public expenditure was applied, he refused to pay his town tax, and was put in jail. A friend paid the tax for him, and he was released. The like annoyance was threatened the next year. But, as his friends paid the tax, notwithstanding his protest, I believe he ceased to resist. No opposition or ridicule had any weight with him. He coldly and fully stated his opinion without affecting to believe that it was the opinion of the company. It was of no consequence, if every one present held the opposite opinion. On one occasion be went to the University Library to procure some books. The librarian refused to lend them. Mr. Thoreau repaired to the President, who stated to him the rules and usages, which permitted the loan of books to resident graduates, to clergymen who were alumni, and to some others resident within a circle of ten miles’ radius from the College. Mr. Thoreau explained to the President that the railroad had destroyed the old scale of distances,-that the library was useless, yes, and President and College useless, on the terms of his rules,-that the one benefit he owed to the College was its library,—that, at this moment, not only his want of books was imperative, but he wanted a large number of books, and assured him that he, Thoreau, and not the librarian, was the proper custodian of these. In short, the President found the petitioner so formidable, and the rules getting to look so ridiculous, that he ended by giving him a privilege which in his hands proved unlimited thereafter.

No truer American existed than Thoreau. His preference of his country and condition was genuine, and his aversion from English and European manners and tastes almost reached contempt. He listened impatiently to news or bon motsgleaned from London circles; and though he tried to be civil, these anecdotes fatigued him. The men were all imitating each other, and on a small mould. Why can they not live as far apart as possible, and each be a man by himself? What he sought was the most energetic nature; and he wished to go to Oregon, not to London. “In every part of Great Britain,” he wrote in his diary, “are discovered traces of the Romans, their funereal urns, their camps, their roads, their dwellings. But New England, at least, is not based on any Roman ruins. We have not to lay the foundations of our houses on the ashes of a former civilization.”

But, idealist as he was, standing for abolition of slavery, abolition of tariffs, almost for abolition of government, it is needless to say he found himself not only unrepresented in actual politics, but almost equally opposed to every class of reformers. Yet he paid the tribute of his uniform respect to the Anti-Slavery party. One man, whose personal acquaintance he had formed, he honored with exceptional regard. Before the first friendly word had been spoken for Captain John Brown, be sent notices to most houses in Concord, that he would speak in a public ball on the condition and character of John Brown, on Sunday evening, and invited all people to come. The Republican Committee, the Abolitionist Committee, sent him word that it was premature and not advisable. He replied,—” I did not send to you for advice, but to announce that I am to speak.” The hall was filled at an early hour by people of all parties, and his earnest eulogy of the hero was beard by all respectfully, by many with a sympathy that surprised themselves.

It was said of Plotinus that be was ashamed of his body, and ’t is very likely he had good reason for it,—that his body was a bad servant, and he had not skill in dealing with the material world, as happens often to men of abstract intellect. But Mr. Thoreau was equipped with a most adapted and serviceable body. He was of short stature, firmly built, of light complexion, with strong, serious blue eyes, and a grave aspect,—his face covered in the late years with a becoming beard. His senses were acute, his frame well-knit and hardy, his bands strong and skilful in the use of tools. And there was a wonderful fitness of body and mind. He could pace sixteen rods more accurately than another man could measure them with rod and chain. He could find his path in the woods at night, he said, better by his feet than his eyes. He could estimate the measure of a tree very well by his eye; he could estimate the weight of a calf or a pig, like a dealer. From a box containing a bushel or more of loose pencils, he could take up with his hands fast enough just a dozen pencils at every grasp. He was a good swimmer, runner, skater, boatman, and would probably out-walk most countrymen in a day’s journey. And the relation of body to mind was still finer than we have indicated. He said he wanted every stride his legs made. The length of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing. If shut up in the house, he did not write at all.

He had a strong common sense, like that which Rose Flammock, the weaver’s daughter, in Scott’s romance, commends in her father, as resembling a yardstick, which, whilst it measures dowlas and diaper, can equally well measure tapestry and cloth of gold. He had always a new resource. When I was planting forest-trees, and had procured half a peck of acorns, he said that only a small portion of them would be sound, and proceeded to examine them, and select the sound ones. But finding this took time, he said, “I think, if you put them all into water, the good ones will sink”; which experiment we tried with success. He could plan a garden, or a house, or a barn; would have been competent to lead a “Pacific Exploring Expedition”; could give judicious counsel in the gravest private or public affairs.

He lived for the day, not cumbered and mortified by his memory. If he brought you yesterday a new proposition, he would bring you to-day another not less revolutionary. A very industrious man, and setting, like all highly organized men, a high value on his time, he seemed the only man of leisure in town, always ready for any excursion that promised well, or for conversation prolonged into late hours. His trenchant sense was never stopped by his rules of daily prudence, but was always up to the new occasion. He liked and used the simplest food, yet, when some one urged a vegetable diet, Thoreau thought all diets a very small matter, saying that “the man who shoots the buffalo lives better than the man who hoards at the Graham House.” He said,—” You can sleep near the railroad, and never be disturbed: Nature knows very well what sounds are worth attending to, and has made up her mind not to hear the railroad-whistle. But things respect the devout mind, and a mental ecstasy was never interrupted.” He noted, what repeatedly befell him, that, after receiving from a distance a rare plant, he would presently find the same in his own haunts. And those pieces of luck which happen only to good players happened to him. One day, walking with a stranger, who inquired where Indian arrow-heads could be found, he replied, “Everywhere,” and, stooping forward, picked one on the instant from the ground. At Mount Washington, in Tuckerman’s Ravine, Thoreau had a bad fall, and sprained his foot. As he was in the act of getting up from his fall, he saw for the first time the leaves of the Arnica mollis.

His robust common sense, armed with stout hands, keen perceptions, and strong will, cannot yet account for the superiority which shone in his simple and hidden life. I must add the cardinal fact, that there was an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of men, which showed him the material world as a means and symbol. This discovery, which sometimes yields to poets a certain casual and interrupted light, serving for the ornament of their writing, was in him an unsleeping insight; and whatever faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, “The other world is all my art: my pencils will draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use it as a means.” This was the muse and genius that ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work, and course of life. This made him a searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion, and, though insensible to some fine traits of culture, could very well report his weight and calibere. And this made the impression of genius which his conversation sometimes gave.

He understood the matter in hand at a glance, and saw the limitations and poverty of those he talked with, so that nothing seemed concealed from such terrible eyes. I have repeatedly known young men of sensibility converted in a moment to the belief that this was the man they were in search of, the man of men, who could tell them all they should do. His own dealing with them was never affectionate, but superior, didactic,—scorning their petty ways,- very slowly conceding, or not conceding at all, the promise of his society at their houses, or even at his own. “Would he not walk with them?” “He did not know. There was nothing so important to him as his walk; he had no walks to throw away on company.” Visits were offered him from respectful parties, but he declined them. Admiring friends offered to carry him at their own cost to the Yellow-Stone River,—to the West Indies,- to South America. But though nothing could be more grave or considered than his refusals, they remind one in quite new relations of that fop Brummel’s reply to the gentleman who offered him his carriage in a shower, “But where will you ride, then? “—and what accusing silences, and what searching and irresistible speeches, battering down all defences, his companions can remember!

Mr. Thoreau dedicated his genius with such entire love to the fields, hills, and waters of his native town, that he made them known and interesting to all reading Americans, and to people over the sea. The river on whose banks he was born and died he knew from its springs to its confluence with the Merrimack. He had made summer and winter observations on it for many years, and at every hour of the day and the night. The result of the recent survey of the Water Commissioners appointed by the State of Massachusetts he had reached by his private experiments, several years earlier. Every fact which occurs in the bed, on the banks, or in the air over it; the fishes, and their spawning and nests, their manners, their food; the shad-flies which fill the air on a certain evening once a year, and which are snapped at by the fishes so ravenously that many of these die of repletion; the conical heaps of small stones on the river-shallows, one of which heaps will sometimes overfill a cart,—these heaps the huge nests of small fishes; the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey; the snake, muskrat, otter, woodchuck, and fox, on the banks; the turtle, frog, hyla, and cricket, which make the banks vocal,—were all known to him, and, as it were, townsmen and fellow-creatures; so that be felt an absurdity or violence in any narrative of one of these by itself apart, and still more of its dimensions on an inch-rule, or in the exhibition of its skeleton, or the specimen of a squirrel or a bird in brandy. He liked to speak of the manners of the river, as itself a lawful creature, yet with exactness, and always to an observed fact. As he knew the river, so the ponds in this region.

One of the weapons he used, more important than microscope or alcohol-receiver to other investigators, was a whim which grew on him by indulgence, yet appeared in gravest statement, namely, of extolling his own town and neighborhood as the most favored centre for natural observation. He remarked that the Flora of Massachusetts embraced almost all the important plants of America,—most of the oaks, most of the willows, the best pines, the ash, the maple, the beech, the nuts. He returned Kane’s “Arctic Voyage” to a friend of whom he had borrowed it, with the remark, that “most of the phenomena noted might be observed in Concord.” He seemed a little envious of the Pole, for the coincident sunrise and sunset, or five minutes’ day after six months: a splendid fact, which Annursnuc had never afforded him. He found red snow in one of his walks, and told me that he expected to find yet the Victoria regia in Concord. He was the attorney of the indigenous plants, and owned to a preference of the weeds to the imported plants, as of the Indian to the civilized man,—and noticed, with pleasure, that the willow bean-poles of his neighbor had grown more than his beans. “See these weeds,” he said, “which have been hoed at by a million farmers all spring and summer, and yet have prevailed, and just now come out triumphant over all lanes, pastures, fields, and gardens, such is their vigor. We have insulted them with low names, too,—as Pigweed, Wormwood, Chickweed, Shad-Blossom.” He says, “They have brave names, too,—Ambrosia, Stellaria, Amelanchia, Amaranth, etc.”

I think his fancy for referring everything to the meridian of Concord did not grow out of any ignorance or depreciation of other longitudes or latitudes, but was rather a playful expression of his conviction of the indifferency of all places, and that the best place for each is where he stands. He expressed it once in this wise:—”I think nothing is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet is not sweeter to you to eat than any other in this world, or in any world.”

The other weapon with which he conquered all obstacles in science was patience. He knew how to sit immovable, a part of the rock he rested on, until the bird, the reptile, the fish, which had retired from him, should come back, and resume its habits, nay, moved by curiosity, should come to him and watch him.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own. He knew every track in the snow or n the ground, and what creature had taken this path before him. One must submit abjectly to such a guide, and the reward was great. Under his arm he carried an old music-book to press plants; in his pocket, his diary and pencil, a spy-glass for birds, microscope, jack-knife, and twine. He wore straw hat, stout shoes, strong gray trousers, to brave shrub-oaks and smilax, and to climb a tree for a hawk’s or a squirrel’s nest. He waded into the pool for the water-plants, and his strong legs were no insignificant part of his armor. On the day I speak of he looked for the Menyanthes, detected it across the wide pool, and, on examination of the florets, decided that it had been in flower five days. He drew out of his breast-pocket his diary, and read the names of all the plants that should bloom on this day, whereof he kept account as a banker when his notes fall due. The Cypripedium not due till to-morrow. He thought, that, if waked up from a trance, in this swamp, he could tell by the plants what time of the year it was within two days. The redstart was flying about, and presently the fine grosbeaks, whose brilliant scarlet makes the rash gazer wipe his eye, and whose fine clear note Thoreau compared to that of a tanager which has got rid of its hoarseness. Presently he heard a note which he called that of the night-warbler, a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush, and which it was vain to seek; the only bird that sings indifferently by night and by day. I told him he must beware of finding and booking it, lest life should have nothing more to show him. He said, “What you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon all the family at dinner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it you become its prey.”

His interest in the flower or the bird lay very deep in his mind, was connected with Nature,—and the meaning of Nature was never attempted to be defined by him. He would not offer a memoir of his observations to the Natural History Society. “Why should I? To detach the description from its connections in my mind would make it no longer true or valuable to me: and they do not wish what belongs to it.” His power of observation seemed to indicate additional senses. He saw as with microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and his memory was a photographic register of all he saw and heard. And yet none knew better than he that it is not the fact that imports, but the impression or effect of the fact on your mind. Every fact lay in glory in his mind, a type of the order and beauty of the whole.

His determination on Natural History was organic. He confessed that he sometimes felt like a hound or a panther, and, if born among Indians, would have been a fell hunter. But, restrained by his Massachusetts culture, he played out the game in this mild form of botany and ichthyology. His intimacy with animals suggested what Thomas Fuller records of Butler the apiologist, that “either he had told the bees things or the bees had told him.” Snakes coiled round his leg; the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them out of the water; he pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail, and took the foxes under his protection from the hunters. Our naturalist had perfect magnanimity; he had no secrets: he would carry you to the heron’s haunt, or even to his most prized botanical swamp,—possibly knowing that you could never find it again, yet willing to take his risks.

No college ever offered him a diploma, or a professor’s chair; no academy made him its corresponding secretary, its discoverer, or even its member. Whether these learned bodies feared the satire of his presence. Yet so much knowledge of Nature’s secret and genius few others possessed, none in a more large and religious synthesis. For not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to the truth itself; and as he discovered everywhere among doctors some leaning of courtesy, it discredited them. He grew to be revered and admired by his townsmen, who had at first known him only as an oddity. The farmers who employed him as a surveyor soon discovered his rare accuracy and skill, his knowledge of their lands, of trees, of birds, of Indian remains, and the like, which enabled him to tell every farmer more than he knew before of his own farm; so that he began to feel a little as if Mr. Thoreau had better rights in his land than he. They felt, too, the superiority of character which addressed all men with a native authority.

Indian relics abound in Concord,—arrow-heads, stone chisels, pestles, and fragments of pottery; and on the river-bank, large heaps of clam-shells and ashes mark spots which the savages frequented. These, and every circumstance touching the Indian, were important in his eyes. His visits to Maine were chiefly for love of the Indian. He had the satisfaction of seeing the manufacture of the bark-canoe, as well as of trying his hand in its management on the rapids. He was inquisitive about the making of the stone arrow-head, and in his last days charged a youth setting out for the Rocky Mountains to find an Indian who could tell him that: “It was well worth a visit to California to learn it.” Occasionally, a small party of Penobscot Indians would visit Concord, and pitch their tents for a few weeks in summer on the river-bank. He failed not to make acquaintance with the best of them; though he well knew that asking questions of Indians is like catechizing beavers and rabbits. In his last visit to Maine he had great satisfaction from Joseph Polis, an intelligent Indian of Oldtown, who was his guide for some weeks.

He was equally interested in every natural fact. The depth of his perception found likeness of law throughout Nature, and I know not any genius who so swiftly inferred universal law from the single fact. He was no pedant of a department. His eye was open to beauty, and his ear to music. He found these, not in rare conditions, but wheresoever he went. He thought the best of music was in single strains; and he found poetic suggestion in the humming of the telegraph-wire.

His poetry might be bad or good; he no doubt wanted a lyric facility and technical skill; but he had the source of poetry in his spiritual perception. He was a good reader and critic, and his judgment on poetry was to the ground of it. He could not be deceived as to the presence or absence of the poetic element in any composition, and his thirst for this made him negligent and perhaps scornful of superficial graces. He would pass by many delicate rhythms, but he would have detected every live stanza or line in a volume, and knew very well where to find an equal poetic charm in prose. He was so enamored of the spiritual beauty that he held all actual written poems in very light esteem in the comparison. He admired Æschylus and Pindar; but, when some one was commending them, he said that “Æschylus and the Greeks, in describing Apollo and Orpheus, had given no song, or no good one. They ought not to have moved trees, but to have chanted to the gods such a hymn as would have sung all their old ideas out of their heads, and new ones in.” His own verses are often rude and defective. The gold does not yet run pure, is drossy and crude. The thyme and marjoram are not yet honey. But if he want lyric fineness and technical merits, if he have not the poetic temperament, he never lacks the causal thought, showing that his genius was better than his talent. He knew the worth of the Imagination for the uplifting and consolation of human life, and liked to throw every thought into a symbol. The fact you tell is of no value, but only the impression. For this reason his presence was poetic, always piqued the curiosity to know more deeply the secrets of his mind. He had many reserves, an unwillingness to exhibit to profane eyes what was still sacred in his own, and knew well how to throw a poetic veil over his experience. All readers of “Walden” will remember his mythical record of his disappointments:-

“I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks, and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud; and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.”

His riddles were worth the reading, and I confide, that, if at any time I do not understand the expression, it is yet just. Such was the wealth of his truth that it was not worth his while to use words in vain. His poem entitled “Sympathy” reveals the tenderness under that triple steel of stoicism, and the intellectual subtilty it could animate. His classic poem on “Smoke” suggests Simonides, but is better than any poem of Simonides. His biography is in his verses. His habitual thought makes all his poetry a hymn to the Cause of causes, the Spirit which vivifies and controls his own.

“I bearing get, who bad but ears, And sight, who had but eyes before; I moments live, who lived but years, And truth discern, who knew but learning’s lore.”

And still more in these religious lines:—

“Now chiefly is my natal hour, And only now my prime of life; I will not doubt the love untold, Which not my worth or want hath bought, Which wooed me young, and wooes me old, And to this evening hath me brought.”

Whilst he used in his writings a certain petulance of remark in reference to churches or churchmen, he was a person of a rare, tender, and absolute religion, a person incapable of any profanation, by act or by thought. Of course, the same isolation which belonged to his original thinking and living detached him from the social religious forms. This is neither to be censured nor regretted. Aristotle long ago explained it, when he said, “One who surpasses his fellow-citizens in virtue is no longer a part of the city. Their law is not for him, since he is a law to himself.”

Thoreau was sincerity itself, and might fortify the convictions of prophets in the ethical laws by his holy living. It was an affirmative experience which refused to be set aside. A truth-speaker he, capable of the most deep and strict conversation; a physician to the wounds of any soul; a friend, knowing not only the secret of friendship, but almost worshipped by those few persons who resorted to him as their confessor and prophet, and knew the deep value of his mind and great heart. He thought that without religion or devotion of some kind nothing great was ever accomplished: and he thought that the bigoted sectarian had better bear this in mind.

His virtues, of course, sometimes ran into extremes. It was easy to trace to the inexorable demand on all for exact truth that austerity which made this willing hermit more solitary even than he wished. Himself of a perfect probity, he required not less of others. He had a disgust at crime, and no worldly success would cover it. He detected paltering as readily in dignified and prosperous persons as in beggars, and with equal scorn. Such dangerous frankness was in his dealing that his admirers called him “that terrible Thoreau,” as if he spoke when silent, and was still present when he had departed. I think the severity of his ideal interfered to deprive him of a healthy sufficiency of human society.

The habit of a realist to find things the reverse of their appearance inclined him to put every statement in a paradox. A certain habit of antagonism defaced his earlier writings,—a trick of rhetoric not quite outgrown in his later, of substituting for the obvious word and thought its diametrical opposite. He praised wild mountains and winter forests for their domestic air, in snow and ice he would find sultriness, and commended the wilderness for resembling Rome and Paris. “It was so dry, that you might call it wet.”

The tendency to magnify the moment, to read all the laws of Nature in the one object or one combination under your eye, is of course comic to those who do not share the philosopher’s perception of identity. To him there was no such thing as size. The pond was a small ocean; the Atlantic, a large Walden Pond. He referred every minute fact to cosmical laws. Though he meant to be just, he seemed haunted by a certain chronic assumption that the science of the day pretended completeness, and he had just found out that the sevens had neglected to discriminate a particular botanical variety, had failed to describe the seeds or count the sepals. “That is to say,” we replied, “the blockheads were not born in Concord; but who said they were? It was their unspeakable misfortune to be born in London, or Paris, or Rome; but, poor fellows, they did what they could, considering that they never saw Bateman’s Pond, or Nine-Acre Corner, or Becky-Stow’s Swamp. Besides, what were you sent into the world for, but to add this observation?”

Had his genius been only contemplative, he had been fitted to his life, but with his energy and practical ability he seemed born for great enterprise and for command; and I so much regret the loss of his rare powers of action, that I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition. Wanting this, instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry-party. Pounding beans is good to the end of pounding empires one of these days; but if, at the end of years, it is still only beans!

But these foibles, real or apparent, were fast vanishing in the incessant growth of a spirit so robust and wise, and which effaced its defeats with new triumphs. His study of Nature was a perpetual ornament to him, and inspired his friends with curiosity to see the world through his eyes, and to hear his adventures. They possessed every kind of interest.

He had many elegances of his own, whilst he scoffed at conventional elegance. Thus, he could not bear to hear the sound of his own steps, the grit of gravel; and therefore never willingly walked in the road, but in the grass, on mountains and in woods. His senses were acute, and he remarked that by night every dwelling-house gives out bad air, like a slaughterhouse. He liked the pure fragrance of melilot. He honored certain plants with special regard, and, over all, the pond-lily,—then, the gentian, and the Milcania scandens, and “life-everlasting,” and a bass-tree which he visited every year ‘when it bloomed, in the middle of July. He thought the scent a more oracular inquisition than the sight,—more oracular and trustworthy. The scent, of course, reveals what is concealed from the other senses. By it he detected earthiness. He delighted in echoes, and said they were almost the only kind of kindred voices that he heard. He loved Nature so well, was so happy in her solitude, that be became very jealous of cities, and the sad work which their refinements and artifices made with man and his dwelling. The axe was always destroying his forest. “Thank God,” he said, “they cannot cut down the clouds!” “All kinds of figures are drawn on the blue ground with this fibrous white paint.”

I subjoin a few sentences taken from his unpublished manuscripts, not only as records of his thought and feeling, but for their power of description and literary excellence.

“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

“The chub is a soft fish, and tastes like boiled brown paper salted.”

“The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them.”

“The locust z-ing.”

“Devil’s-needles zigzagging along the Nut-Meadow brook.”

“Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear.”

“I put on some hemlock-boughs, and the rich salt crackling of their leaves was like mustard to the ear, the crackling of uncountable regiments. Dead trees love the fire.”

“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”

“The tanager flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves.”

“If I wish for a horse-hair for my compass-sight, I must go to the stable; but the hair-bird, with her sharp eyes, goes to the road.”

“Immortal water, alive even to the superficies.”

“Fire is the most tolerable third party.”

“Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that line.”

“No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instep as the beech.”

“How did these beautiful rainbow-tints get into the shell of the fresh-water clam, buried in the mud at the bottom of our dark river?”

“Hard are the times when the infant’s shoes are second-foot.”

“We are strictly confined to our men to whom we give liberty.”

“Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.”

“Of what significance the things you can forget? A little thought is sexton to all the world.”

“How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of character?”

“Only he can be trusted with gifts who can present a face of bronze to expectations.”

“I ask to be melted. You can only ask of the metals that they be tender to the fire that melts them. To nought else can they be tender.”

There is a flower known to botanists, one of the same genus with our summer plant called “Life-Everlasting,” a Gnaphalium like that, which grows on the most inaccessible cliffs of the Tyrolese mountains, where the chamois dare hardly venture, and which the hunter, tempted by its beauty, and by his love, (for it is immensely valued by the Swiss maidens,) climbs the cliffs to gather, and is sometimes found dead at the foot, with the flower in his hand. It is called by botanists the Gnaphalium leontopodium, but by the Swiss Edelweisse, which signifies Noble Purity. Thoreau seemed to me living in the hope to gather this plant, which belonged to him of right. The scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity, and we were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. It seems an injury that he should leave in the midst his broken task, which none else can finish,—a kind of indignity to so noble a soul, that it should depart out of Nature before yet he has been really shown to his peers for what he is. But he, at least, is content. His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.

and Forster had George Emerson marry Lucy Honeychurch
and who was a bit like Cecil, why Edward himself...  he really didn't want a woman, he wanted an ornament

he wanted to be pretty
he was pretty pretty too
he wanted to be prettier

and that seemed somehow wrong and yet it informed his work so that it all became something more, the extra touch was laid into the work, someone would go off on just such a thing that did move the story forward in that inimicable way in which we see this mysterious person who is our own character we have carefully hewn out of the letters being built up and chiselled to fit the part and the reason we know this is that they are wearing clothes

she was wearing a blue dress, and he couldn't tell you what his own mother wore on Christmas day but the dress was faded blue, but in a very whitewashed way and still blue enough to be powdery blue like a wisp of a cloud was transparent and she had her hair hanging down and it was very flat and you could see the exact shape of her head and you could see the whole effort of hair is to hide the shape of a head although it was a very good shape it was not a sort of classic shape one imagines a perfect head shape it was not like hers and it didn't matter but then she put her hat on, and out the window there one could see the violent swaying of the windy poplars

and she smiled then, and it was the worst sort of smile, her whole faced scrunched up into a big smile and it was so embarassing that i blushed and she looked down and my face got even hotter which it never does.  it never does

well then i knew it
right there
and she wouldn't give me the time of day
i knew that too
she had turned white
my hand went out to catch her
in my mind she did a quick spinning flounce on one toe and then keeled over in a dramatic faint from which she emerged with a bloody nose having fallen flat on that instrument

i believe it was broken
so for the rest of the story you have to see her going through the first day with double black eyes
and then they slowly get better a nice yellowish tinge accompanies the edges and one can clearly see that her nose is gone forever and what remains is an entirely new nose which will make her into someone entirely different than the lovely thing she most certainly was

and i remembered that brief look i had of her perfection and how that face is just gone because the nose is such a prominent feature among features where we have only one of it like the mouth the universe did not see fit to give us a matching pair of those the sound and sight capacity requiring a more complex system of data collection in order for the eyesight and the Listening to find their complete range of motion

some never do?
they never know what music is for
don't be absurd everyone knows
no no they don't
no they really do
i don't think they do
of course they do
you're taking it for granted but it isn't true trust me, they don't
you really don't think so?
all of us? why should we all Listen so well?  it's not as if there is that much being said that makes any difference
very true...

this business of having eyelids makes visuals so much more telling, the ears must become tuned in at different frequencys and the noise threshholds vary considerably [the high strung] and the unsung

the heroes need a lot more protection than ever before
they're not putting up with any crap from you see
not even an iota of crap
not one

the punishment does suit the crime
this is true even when the lives of ten thousand grandparents have been irrevocably worsened by want through greed

the conscience really needs to be talked about
we have them
we like to deny it
we like to pretend like ahhahah we're wank curs

it is much easier to pretend like they don't exist
nasty items personified by winged creatures in white robes and long hairs parted down the middle falling on either side of the face in heavy curls  sitting on the shoulder while the other side is occupied by the devil

the devil you say!

so say i with a sort of a dracula meets gotham city look about him, always playing his own advocate you know to keep the conscience honest

honesty sometimes being your best bet for being able to do the right thing
so now they've changed it to a cartoon about a brain and a heart
the moral remains the same
but this time the devil looks like Krang
and the heart is valves unconnected to veins
it's very red, the brain is pinkish which is weird when we learn about white matter and grey matter, they don't really say pink matter, it's that whole Krang thing,  who was also pink ... all brains like those something trafalmidorians something like that, those aliens studied zoology

the head v the heart humor still has the moral to the story the conscience has evolved, it is not either/or

or is it?

the idea that we can reason logically about Life is the cornerstone of philosophical studies and the philosophers have pointed right to failure and continue to do so... because of this premise that the reasonable is somehow the most beautiful ... when quite the opposite is actually true, it hardly ever is...

the duality thing is apt to ignore the obvious signs and seek out someone who will tell them what to think and there are many obliging friends who will give it the old college try, and how could they not?  unless it has been to the point that we aren't saying where it hurts, then the duality multiplies and becomes complexity and then it's complicated ... you have to go back and see where that one split off, that one branching moment of the plant, what is it called? that dichotomous event which moves in two directions toward the same light source and all because some passing grasshopper ate the tender tendril sprouting out of the seed from the soil to reach for the star

So yes

He wrote the detective story, Walden, not as great as Father Brown especially being played by Obiwankinobi ... there's that to get back to.

and then fun thing about that movie i watched today
The Bells of St. Marys
Mr. Bogardes was Clarence!

and they were praying but O'Malley he tells the doctor to tell the old guy he only has six months to live, ahhahah and the sisters think it is their prayers that get him to donate the building for a new school

she sees his office as a classroom and his conference hall as a gymnasium and then later on he sees it too!  the visual effect of a vision ...  a realization of something that is going to happen