3.19.2014

spring impressions
...Thoreau's Journal: 19-Mar-1858

Another pleasant and warm day. Painted my boat this afternoon. These spring impressions (as of the apparent waking up of the meadow described day before yesterday) are not repeated the same year, at least not with the same force, for the next day the same phenomenon does not surprise us. Our appetite has lost its edge. The other day the face of the meadows wore a peculiar appearance, as if it were beginning to wake up under the influence of the south-west wind and the warm sun, but it cannot again this year present precisely that appearance to me. I have taken a step forward to a new position and must see something else. You perceive, and are affected by, changes too subtle to be described.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thoreau maybe saying that no matter how each day begins, how each season begins, it is always different, always fresh, and always new.
Having lived in one area for most of my life I know that each day I see something new, experience something new, and thus do I rarely get bored where I live after all these years.
Thank you.
Bill

TalkingStick said...

Once you see something awakened, it does not look awakened again the second day. So, the second day, go awaken your boat instead by painting it.

michael jameson said...

the first time i passed by the wooded hill near my new home i stopped and stared at all its peculiarities for a long time,happy it was there,the second day and the third i stopped again,then through familiarity and the vision being impressed upon me and knowing i would pass by the hill every day its grandeur became less then its first sight,it is the same with all that becomes very familiar, until the change of a new season. michael jameson oldantiqueguy@hotmail.com

michael jameson said...

familiar is not a bad thing! i now know this hill and take solace there as if it were a friend!, and rejoice it is not a city block.

Geoff Wisner said...

Should be "Our appetite has lost its edge." I wonder what color his boat was?