Sporadic Soapbox

"I have learned this at least by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." -- Henry David Thoreau

Walden is one of those books everybody ought to read. You might think it's a lot of fluff, and yes, some of it's dull as forest peat moss, but there is also wisdom. I think I'd have liked Henry David--stubborn enough to live in a hut by a pond for two years and two months, yet ingenuous enough to write quite a few paragraphs describing the hooting of owls. Very passionate. He seems like such a sexy fellow.

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars." --H.D.T.

I'll go fishing with you, Henry. I looked up some portraits of him on the internet. Some of the younger ones aren't bad. But looks aren't everything. Thoreau was able to channel the throbbing pulse of generations of humanity who, living lives of"quiet desperation," yearned to bathe naked in the river and fill their mouths with young green shoots.