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Pages from Levi’s
Journal
March 11, 2006
Arriving at Emily Dickinson’s
house was relatively unspectacular. Not knowing anything about her, I was
visiting a neat old late Georgian house. Inside of the house, was more
interesting, and it certainly was neat, being in a house where a person
of such high esteem had lived. Venturing to the other house, the 2nd
empire house, whose integrity had been undisturbed for so long, now that
was fascinating. Especially the floors, they were beautiful, large
irregular boards, of different wood, consisting of trees that were
available at the time. Adding to the mystique of the house was the state
of decay that it was in, while it is unfortunate, that the house is
literally falling apart, having been subject to only preventive
maintenance, renovations, would severely damage the integrity, and that
would be worse a shame. The rest of the day paled in comparison.
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March 13, 2006
As we were driving through Concord,
I was looking out the bus window, admiring all the old beautiful houses,
looking forward to another day of looking at cool old stuff, full of
character, the kind of which does not exist anymore. We passed a house on
the left, and without knowing what it was, I remarked aloud to Liz Bessom
that that house was spectacular, special, and perfect. About fifteen
seconds after my remark, we pulled into the parking lot for the Old
Manse. This was by far the highlight of the trip for me. Walking into the
house was something I’m not even going to bother trying to describe. It
was spectacular. I can say with certainty, I saw EVERY detail no matter
how slight. I was so intent on studying everything I missed almost the
entire tour. At one point, I was reading Nathanial Hawthorne’s
inscription on the window in the room on the northwest side of the house,
when the tour guide stopped, and said “I love students like you.” I
turned, and she was looking at me. I have never had a teacher, or
anybody, say anything like that to me before, so I thought she was
talking to someone else, but apparently, she was excited that someone had
found the scribe, before she pointed it out. The inscription was pretty
cool, because, firstly it indicates total historic integrity, something I
hold in extreme high regard. Secondly, I grew up spending summers in
Maine, about three miles from Hawthorne’s boyhood home. I literally grew
up climbing around on the same rocks that he did. Swimming in the same
spots he did. Climbing down in a cave, many times where he hid from
Indians. (Hawthorne’s Cave is actually on my grandmother’s property.) The
absolute pinnacle of the trip was when the grandfather clock chimed in
the room next to where we were standing, and the lady told us that the
clock had not been serviced since the Revolutionary War. That a machine
could be that reliable is absolutely unfathomable. I consider that clock
to be the most valuable single object on the planet, and I got to hear it
chime. I would give my life gladly for that clock. Unfortunately, not
enough time was devoted to the Old Manse. The rest of the day was rushed,
and while Authors’ Ridge could easily have been another exceptional
visit, it was cut short, and as such was not as enjoyable as it should
have been. A full day devoted to these two spots might not have been
enough, let alone one hour each.
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March 14, 2006
Walden Pond is a nice place;
unfortunately, there is no integrity left. It is still a nice place and
I had a nice afternoon there. I did have some time to think about things.
It is my observation that while people pay homage to the
Transcendentalist movement, there is little or no understanding of what
it really means to transcend nature. (Not that such a thing is possible
in an afternoon at a pond with the noise of traffic whizzing by.) But
inevitably, a modern person remarks on how beautiful a place is and how
they could spend the rest of their life there, then gets in their car
to go to town to shop or go to a restaurant. Point being, modern people
are totally cut off from the environment. It’s a pretty picture, but
not one worth studying for any length of time. – MUST HAVE DISTRACTION
– I believe that this is why the environmental movement is destined to
failure, because even those who proclaim to love nature and want to
protect it are basically unwilling to live in it, and by embracing the
need for distraction and total comfort at all times and at any cost,
they are as guilty of the destruction of nature, and for that matter
the removal of Transcendentalism from modern life as those who seek the
destruction of nature as a course of economic growth. If this statement
is construed as judgmental, and arrogant, then so be it, because the
great Transcendentalist writers who we came to learn about focused on
wakening people up from there consuming stupor and, in doing so, were
critical of their own contemporaries as well. I believe that if Thoreau
were alive today, he would argue along with me. As of my visit to
Walden Pond, I had never read anything by Thoreau. That night I went
back to the hotel, and got all freaked out, and read Walden in total: his truths are
self-evident. But it requires more than just reading it to understand
it – you have to live it – and I don’t think that there are many people
today that will ever understand his words in the deeper sense that he
intended.
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