(no subject)
Sep. 19th, 2004 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynhefar"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
When I was younger I was absolutely convinced that what I really wanted to do with my life was buy a big chunk of woodland, build a log cabin and live there. I would grow or catch or hunt my own food, sew my own clothes and wash them in a stream. I would learn pottery, and make my own dishes and bowls. I would learn grass-weaving, and weave my own baskets. And I would carve animals out of wood and sell them, and the baskets, and the pottery, and any extra vegetables from my garden for money to buy books and lamp oil and cloth, those being the only things I would not make for myself.
And maybe it was a foolish dream, possible perhaps in the time of Thoreau, but impractical in our own time, as so many people have reminded me. I think perhaps the reason I have avoided reading Walden until this is because I knew it would rekindle that dream in me. And it has. I long for the woods, for solitude. I long to take what nature has given and shape it in my hands to something useful, no matter how simple. There is a satisfaction in the fashioning of a clay bowl or a wooden pipe that far exceeds the satisfaction of money earned or goods bought, or even of books read.
And so I sit here at my underground desk in the claustrophobic library, with the garish neon lights and the mechanical sounds of the elevator and the photocopier and the students at the computers typing. And I slouch under the weight of the building above me, of my own regrets, and of the knowledge that were I to die now, I would indeed discover that I had not lived.
When I was younger I was absolutely convinced that what I really wanted to do with my life was buy a big chunk of woodland, build a log cabin and live there. I would grow or catch or hunt my own food, sew my own clothes and wash them in a stream. I would learn pottery, and make my own dishes and bowls. I would learn grass-weaving, and weave my own baskets. And I would carve animals out of wood and sell them, and the baskets, and the pottery, and any extra vegetables from my garden for money to buy books and lamp oil and cloth, those being the only things I would not make for myself.
And maybe it was a foolish dream, possible perhaps in the time of Thoreau, but impractical in our own time, as so many people have reminded me. I think perhaps the reason I have avoided reading Walden until this is because I knew it would rekindle that dream in me. And it has. I long for the woods, for solitude. I long to take what nature has given and shape it in my hands to something useful, no matter how simple. There is a satisfaction in the fashioning of a clay bowl or a wooden pipe that far exceeds the satisfaction of money earned or goods bought, or even of books read.
And so I sit here at my underground desk in the claustrophobic library, with the garish neon lights and the mechanical sounds of the elevator and the photocopier and the students at the computers typing. And I slouch under the weight of the building above me, of my own regrets, and of the knowledge that were I to die now, I would indeed discover that I had not lived.
