Walden

the first time i read this felt more like there was a pretentious pressure here to go to the woods and live a unique life rather than stay in your normal job, etc… this bugged me. but this reread made me realize thoreau is not telling you to live like him (despite spending so much time telling you exactly how much money he spent and beans he planted). he is just advocating for a life without a push for success in any one area, to continue to explore and change and be uncomfortable, and to “seek truth.” i connect with this much more now as i enter the years of my life where it feels like i can no longer change my path… once you have a degree it feels like you have to use it exactly as intended and stay along that career. but i guess there’s more to life than your career, and within one career there are many paths, and there’s always a possibility of changing careers… etc.

I vacillated as I read this. I was often engrossed in Thoreau's twin urges—to simplicity, and to presence in each moment within nature. But I was repelled by his twin delusions—that the poorer a person is, the happier he must be, and that Thoreau himself was aware of the One True Way to live. He spends an awful lot of time disparaging the common actions & manners of virtually every human being other than himself. And over & over again he valorizes poverty, in a way that makes one doubt he's ever actually experienced it.

But after all, those are mostly just faults in the author's voice, and they're more than outweighed by the moments of clarity and presence that suffuse the book. I remembered a lot of the quotes, of course—"In wildness is the preservation of the world", "If you have built castles in the air...", "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer", etc.—but to come across them again in context was to encounter them as new. There's a richness and texture to Thoreau's philosophy that's really quite gorgeous. I was glad to spend time there.

Another book that I managed to not experience as a young person. Interesting ideas about eschewing consumerism and communing with nature. In mid29th century. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Some lovely descriptions of the natural world and amusing, childish attempts at explaining some phenomena. The most annoying idea was that journalism is nothing more than gossip. And then I remembered Fox (faux) News.

I read this my sophomore year in high school, and then subsequently went on a field trip with my class to Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. I'm not sure how much I appreciated it then, but I recently reread it and it's clear that I couldn't totally appreciate it as a child. I love it as an adult. Thoreau seeks and achieves real freedom.


In front of Walden Pond, May 1995 (I'm on the right)

But, Thoreau is the original Konmari. He has no kids and lives alone... even in those circumstances it's pretty hard to live like this, but his points are still worth thinking about.

i learned a lot but oml some parts were boring as balls