Today's soundtrack is Todd Rundgren: Something/Anything?
This afternoon, I'm continuing Selections From Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. I'm now on the second chapter, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For."
Thoreau quotes Cowper: "'I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute'" (p. 57). Thoreau says that a poet can enjoy "the most valuable part of a farm" (p. 57) by only having visited it, never having owned it - he observes it, thinks about it, and writes verse about what he saw and thought and felt.
Thoreau says that the reason he wanted to live alone in the woods is because he "wished to live deliberately" (p. 63) and learn which things in life are essential. He wanted to simplify - not to experience less, but so that he would be unencumbered and free to really live.
