at night, we look at art; women with long dresses and ladders leaning on moons, curled up statues fight the
dark evening chill—fog rises from the damp leaves and seeps into our bones, into our exhaled breaths as we
contemplate unspoken questions, from unspoken conversations with dead poets and philosophers and husbands and wives
January is proving to be snowy and cold with white skies and treacherous roads. I marvel at the frozen beauty falling in a horizontal slant during a squall or drifting quietly out the kitchen window. My eyes are almost blinded by bright colors inside; I focus gently on softer hues, fairy lights, dried flowers, branches covered in yarn, books on snowflake photographs and these words from Thoreau:
January 1852: “The blue in my eye sympathizes with this blue in the snow….Would not snowdrifts be a good study,—their philosophy and poetry?” from The Journal 1937–1861 by Henry David Thoreau
August 1850
As my eye rested on the blossom of the meadow–sweet in a hedge, I heard the note of an autumnal cricket, and was penetrated with the sense of autumn. Was it sound? or was it form? or was it scent? or was it flavor? It is now the royal month of August.
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
Excerpt from the book: The Journal 1837-1861 by Henry David Thoreau
After a rain-threatening morning it is a beautiful Indian summer day, the most remarkable hitherto and equal to any of the kind. Yet we kept fires in the forenoon, the warmth not having got into the house. It is akin to sin to spend such a day in the house.
from The Journal 1837-1861 by Henry David Thoreau
“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i.e., we are not looking for it. So in the larger sense, we find only the world we look for.”
from The Journal 1837-1861 by Henry David Thoreau
The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become.
from The Journal 1837-1861 by Henry David Thoreau
How early in the year it begins to be late! It matters not by how little we have fallen behind: it seems irretrievably late. The year is full of warnings of its shortness, as is life.
from The Journal 1837–1861 by Henry David Thoreau
The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become.
from The Journal 1837–1861 by Henry David Thoreau
white satin moths fly through early morning fog
as i sit on the side porch in the hushed silence,
with my coffee and thoreau
spanishwoods 