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A Page from Megan’s Journal
April 15, 2006
I’m back
home – it’s early in the morning and my window is open. I woke up to
the sound of birds chirping. Several kinds of birds chirping back at
one another. And since we live in a hollow, I can judge how far away
the bird is by how much its chirp resounds through the hollow. I
love coming home – it’s the small stuff like this that make me miss it
even more when I go back to Shepherd. Because, while Shepherdstown
is gorgeous in the spring, it doesn’t have the air of natural simplicity
that home does. I don’t wake up to birds chirping – and all of the
blooming trees have been carefully chosen and placed for the best
effect. And while I do appreciate that and love the trees, there’s
just something about driving down a dirt road with fields on one side and
trees on the other; then looking carefully into the trees, you see
patches of Johnny-Jump-Ups and little white star flowers. These are
my roots. I guess deep at heart I’m just a country girl – I love my
mountains and fields and runs and birds and just open Nature.
In my 18th Century
class, we read Burke and discussed his theory that the greatest human
emotion is fear, so in order for something to be wholly beautiful, it has
to produce that ultimate emotion, and therefore be fearful. We
discussed the words “awesome” and “awful” and how they relate to this
theory – the most beautiful (or awesome) things (according to Burke)
produce a feeling of awe and fear. I don’t think that I agree with him to
the sense that the most beautiful things have to cause fear; I believe
that they do have to cause some strong emotion, just not necessarily
fear. Thus far, I’ve found that most beautiful things tend to
hurt. They somehow reach into me and touch that inner core and
produce feelings of intense sadness, loneliness, and sometimes almost
despair. But the sights that draw forth these emotions aren’t
necessarily great works of art or carefully planned gardens – it can be
the most fleeting glimpse of a gully in between two hills, covered with a
layer of leaves, broken tree branches and dead trees leaning against the
ones still standing, beams of light shining down from in between clusters
of leaves, and sometimes a run going right through the middle of it
all. All taken in as we whiz by in our car, but still just hurting
because it makes me know that something is missing. That simple kind
of beauty? The appreciation of that kind of beauty? Or the
promise of some other world that I know can’t really exist?
“The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature,
when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and
astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are
suspended with some degree of horror.” ~Edmund Burke
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