Sylvan Reverie

The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it, therefore, while it lasts, and not spend it to no purpose.
-Pliny the Elder

It occurs to me that purpose and deliberation are often viewed as a single concept. After all, to do something on purpose is to do it deliberately; but thinking about this connection today caused me to see things in a different light. Deliberation and purpose can be very separate concepts – it is possible to have an event that doesn’t deliberately take place, that still has a purpose … and our failure to recognize a purpose doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist, it means only that we’ve failed to recognize a purpose.

In a desolate world devoid of color I wandered, indifferent.
Suddenly I beheld a vibrant, aurous light -
I stood enthralled, and wept at the sight
of the golden vision, breaking across the bleakness.
Consumed, I abandoned thought for all else and there I died,
enveloped by the beauty my life was long denied.
- Fallingleaf

A wise man poor
Is like a sacred book that ’s never read,—
To himself he lives, and to all else seems dead.
This age thinks better of a gilded fool
Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom’s school.
-Thomas Dekker

This age was of course, for Thomas Dekker, four hundred years ago. That things haven’t changed much through the course of the past centuries suggests that we haven’t come so far as we might like to think. The subtle science of advertising (along with it’s more-and-less-subtle technologies), if anything, has only managed to strengthen the status of the gilded fool, treating us to his visage nearly everywhere we turn.

As much as I might prefer to think otherwise, I’m as vulnerable to this superficial bandwagon as anyone. Recognizing this vulnerability, though, helps me limit the influence of the gilded fool in my life; and inspires me to look beneath the surface in order to find some of the unread books in our world.

There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to
interpret the things, and more books upon books than
upon all other subjects; we do nothing but comment
upon one another.
- Michel Eyquem, seigneur de Montaigne

Let’s prove him right! I created this area originally as a comment area, when I had comments to individual posts turned off. Since I turned the comment sections on, I’ve left this here as an area for more random comments or conversations ….

The Autumn seems to cry for thee,
Best lover of the Autumn-days!
- Sarah Chauncey (Susan Coolidge) Woolsey

As the ground serves to collect and absorb fallen leaves, this journal’s purpose is to collect and absorb my thoughts and musings … what might grow from such soil only the gods can know.