This young man was one of my companions this past weekend. I'll return to him in a few moments. If you don't recognize him, this is a famous portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
One of the first things I learned about computers was that when they started to misbehave, you often needed to reboot. From time to time, rebooting wasn't enough, and you needed to power down completely - often unplugging the computer from it's power source.
This weekend I really needed to unplug - not my computer - myself. As you may know, I live without television - that is to say commercial programming - I own a very nice television set on which I watch movies and British television or classic American shows, all commercial free.
The only regular radio I listen to tends to be my clock radio in the morning when it is waking me up or when I am in my car. However, I have a wonderful assortment of music on iTunes and I highly recommend Pandora radio on the internet.
So, I already live a somewhat "unplugged" existence. However, I reached a point where I needed a bit more "unplugging." I put up my "Gone Fishin" sign here and on Facebook and unplugged. I read and watched movies and spent some time in the early to mid 19th century.
I began with an early novel by Hawthorne. I also read a very short (and not particularly well written) history of the transcendentalists, American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever. I dusted off my copies of Emerson and Thoreau and began plowing through Emerson's "Nature" essay and Thoreau's A Week On the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Last night I started Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter (which I have never read before).
A month or so ago I created a Facebook quiz (Part II, in fact) - a "How Well Do You Know..." quiz - and one of the questions involved me having to take a one way trip in a time machine and what year would I enter...1409, 1709, 1809, 1909, 2109. My answer was "1809." I often feel that I was born into the wrong century. The Romantic Age appeals to me - the point at which humanity's knowledge was expanding, but just before the Industrial Age came and began changing everything.
My respite this past weekend was enriched by spending time with these quirky intellectuals from over 150 years ago. Without turning this into a lesson in 19th Century American Lit, I will simply say that Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorn, Louisa May Alcott and her family, Melville, Margaret Fuller - they all lead rather intertwined lives in New England. They were not satisfied with the world the way it was and attempted to write about it. They deliberately lived their lives in manners that attempted to demonstrate their beliefs.
American Bloomsbury helped me follow these writers through the ups and downs of their lives. Writers who are today remembered as foundation stones in American Literature, were not seen as such in their own day. I found something healing in reading about them this weekend.
By Monday afternoon, I finally reached the peace I had been seeking all weekend. My home no longer felt like quite the trap that I had been seeing lately. I looked around and saw things with fresh eyes and felt again my reasons for living where I live and the way in which I live. I rolled up my sleeves and started doing some Fall cleaning and felt at home in my nest in a way I had lost lately.
Our lives are such treadmills or merry-go-rounds - and I'm not trying to emphasize the repetitive nature so much as the constant motion - it is so easy to lose our grounding, we are so busy moving along - yet we measure our lives up against these single moments in time. We either pull out a photo album and reminisce over past events captured in a picture. We catch an episode of an old favorite television show and marvel at the time gone by. A favorite song from high school plays unexpectedly on the oldies station. Perhaps we believe we see how a good friend is living his life; yet it is still a snap shot, if you will. These moments are stagnant, whereas our lives are constantly moving and changing. It's an apples and oranges kind of comparison.
Those characters in the media (TV, movies, song) never age and change - our relation to them changes. Perhaps this is sounding way too metaphysical. Have you ever finally watched a movie that was SO important to you when you were 17 - you thought it was the most important thing around - but now you watch it and it's lost it's power? That begins to get at what I'm trying to say.
When I met my ex in town earlier this year, for example, I had been measuring my life up against a static memory of him that I carried in my head. My life (always in transition) was measured against a static memory that didn't really change, though, in truth, it probably mellowed into something rosier than the truth. When faced with the reality of where he is now in his life - my relationship to that static past disappeared - I looked at this man before me now and thought, "I wouldn't want to be with him."
So where I am going with this ramble and what does it have to do with these moldy old writers? Well, for an English major such as myself, these writers represent a way of living that I find very appealing, but they are static icons if you will. I have pasted together a weak understanding of their philosophy with some romantic notions about life and then measure my life in motion against this snap shot of the transcendentalists. I can go all weak in the knees over that dreamy portrait of Hawthorne over and over again, but it was only a single moment in his life.
This weekend I was able to track these icons over time and break down those static moments that I compare my life against and see them for all the aches and pains and struggles and successes that made up their full lives. I think I would have liked them, especially Thoreau, for he was a bit of a hermit who seemed to relate better to animals than to humans. For the moment I have stopped measuring the apple of my life against the oranges of these static moments and have found a peaceful place once again.
As for that dream boat, Hawthorne?
Just like the rest of us, he got old and discouraged and his life didn't quite work out the way that he had intended.
I can't recommend enough a long weekend "unplug." I realize it's easier to do when you live alone in the woods in the Upper Peninsula. When you live in the middle of a city with children and a husband and all the demands that go with that it may be a bit of a challenge. Try and find a way to do it though, it can be very rewarding.
If you're really desperate, then you must find a way to get yourself to the U.P. woods and I will put you up in my guest bedroom and give some good books to read and some dogs to cuddle with. Peace.
One of the first things I learned about computers was that when they started to misbehave, you often needed to reboot. From time to time, rebooting wasn't enough, and you needed to power down completely - often unplugging the computer from it's power source.
This weekend I really needed to unplug - not my computer - myself. As you may know, I live without television - that is to say commercial programming - I own a very nice television set on which I watch movies and British television or classic American shows, all commercial free.
The only regular radio I listen to tends to be my clock radio in the morning when it is waking me up or when I am in my car. However, I have a wonderful assortment of music on iTunes and I highly recommend Pandora radio on the internet.
So, I already live a somewhat "unplugged" existence. However, I reached a point where I needed a bit more "unplugging." I put up my "Gone Fishin" sign here and on Facebook and unplugged. I read and watched movies and spent some time in the early to mid 19th century.
I began with an early novel by Hawthorne. I also read a very short (and not particularly well written) history of the transcendentalists, American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever. I dusted off my copies of Emerson and Thoreau and began plowing through Emerson's "Nature" essay and Thoreau's A Week On the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Last night I started Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter (which I have never read before).
A month or so ago I created a Facebook quiz (Part II, in fact) - a "How Well Do You Know..." quiz - and one of the questions involved me having to take a one way trip in a time machine and what year would I enter...1409, 1709, 1809, 1909, 2109. My answer was "1809." I often feel that I was born into the wrong century. The Romantic Age appeals to me - the point at which humanity's knowledge was expanding, but just before the Industrial Age came and began changing everything.
My respite this past weekend was enriched by spending time with these quirky intellectuals from over 150 years ago. Without turning this into a lesson in 19th Century American Lit, I will simply say that Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorn, Louisa May Alcott and her family, Melville, Margaret Fuller - they all lead rather intertwined lives in New England. They were not satisfied with the world the way it was and attempted to write about it. They deliberately lived their lives in manners that attempted to demonstrate their beliefs.
American Bloomsbury helped me follow these writers through the ups and downs of their lives. Writers who are today remembered as foundation stones in American Literature, were not seen as such in their own day. I found something healing in reading about them this weekend.
By Monday afternoon, I finally reached the peace I had been seeking all weekend. My home no longer felt like quite the trap that I had been seeing lately. I looked around and saw things with fresh eyes and felt again my reasons for living where I live and the way in which I live. I rolled up my sleeves and started doing some Fall cleaning and felt at home in my nest in a way I had lost lately.
Our lives are such treadmills or merry-go-rounds - and I'm not trying to emphasize the repetitive nature so much as the constant motion - it is so easy to lose our grounding, we are so busy moving along - yet we measure our lives up against these single moments in time. We either pull out a photo album and reminisce over past events captured in a picture. We catch an episode of an old favorite television show and marvel at the time gone by. A favorite song from high school plays unexpectedly on the oldies station. Perhaps we believe we see how a good friend is living his life; yet it is still a snap shot, if you will. These moments are stagnant, whereas our lives are constantly moving and changing. It's an apples and oranges kind of comparison.
Those characters in the media (TV, movies, song) never age and change - our relation to them changes. Perhaps this is sounding way too metaphysical. Have you ever finally watched a movie that was SO important to you when you were 17 - you thought it was the most important thing around - but now you watch it and it's lost it's power? That begins to get at what I'm trying to say.
When I met my ex in town earlier this year, for example, I had been measuring my life up against a static memory of him that I carried in my head. My life (always in transition) was measured against a static memory that didn't really change, though, in truth, it probably mellowed into something rosier than the truth. When faced with the reality of where he is now in his life - my relationship to that static past disappeared - I looked at this man before me now and thought, "I wouldn't want to be with him."
So where I am going with this ramble and what does it have to do with these moldy old writers? Well, for an English major such as myself, these writers represent a way of living that I find very appealing, but they are static icons if you will. I have pasted together a weak understanding of their philosophy with some romantic notions about life and then measure my life in motion against this snap shot of the transcendentalists. I can go all weak in the knees over that dreamy portrait of Hawthorne over and over again, but it was only a single moment in his life.
This weekend I was able to track these icons over time and break down those static moments that I compare my life against and see them for all the aches and pains and struggles and successes that made up their full lives. I think I would have liked them, especially Thoreau, for he was a bit of a hermit who seemed to relate better to animals than to humans. For the moment I have stopped measuring the apple of my life against the oranges of these static moments and have found a peaceful place once again.
As for that dream boat, Hawthorne?
Just like the rest of us, he got old and discouraged and his life didn't quite work out the way that he had intended.I can't recommend enough a long weekend "unplug." I realize it's easier to do when you live alone in the woods in the Upper Peninsula. When you live in the middle of a city with children and a husband and all the demands that go with that it may be a bit of a challenge. Try and find a way to do it though, it can be very rewarding.
If you're really desperate, then you must find a way to get yourself to the U.P. woods and I will put you up in my guest bedroom and give some good books to read and some dogs to cuddle with. Peace.
2 comments:
On their Easter Sunday morning, my Greek friends greet their family members with, "He is risen" to which they respond, "He is truly risen."
And so, my son, might I say, "You are risen." Perhaps I can now phone you and fill you in on the newest member of our family, Winston.
OMG - you read all "MY" people - translate that to mean people who were pivotal in the formation of the Unitarian Universalist Church. Of course you feel better. You need to google "Stand on the Side of Love." It is the new push by the UU's after the Knoxville Church shootings - a huge march on DC for GLBT rights being organized by my church. Obama has reneged on so much for their/our equal rights.
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