On living deeply and deliberately
Aug. 25th, 2007 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirHaste Street, on the Feast of St. Louis
I've been reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl, a book recommended to me by my college roommate last year. The chapter just ended with Hannah Schneider trying to quote the first lines of Walden:
I don't especially associate these words with Walden itself. Instead they remind me of The Dead Poets Society, which is where I first heard them spoken. Actually, I think the movie quotes the whole first paragraph, since the line that I remember most vividly is: "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." How those words echo. To me, they're not so much about Thoreau's exercise in minimalist living but rather about life as revelation, the sense of awakening to the world. The immersion in the present moment, the anticipation of the next. I've met very few people who were able to live like that, but on the occasions when I have encountered such a person, I can't help admiring them for it. It's not a measure of how much raw pleasure or experience that one gets out of life, but the passion that one puts into it.
It's a little sad when I think of all the people I know in real life who have more exciting lives than me--or at least believe they do--and yet live so indifferently. I don't want to live like that. I want to be able to look at the places I pass by day after day and still feel fascination, curiosity. I don't want time to pass by mindlessly; I don't want to look back and wonder where the days, weeks, months have gone; I don't want to wake up in the mornings and want to go back to sleep again. I want each day to be filled to the brim, even with trivial moments, as long as I still notice them.
Sometimes it makes me a little frantic, to think of how much I let slip by, how easy it is to float on the surface instead of plunging in. It is, however, what motivates me to write, because in order to write, one must notice everything, even the most mundane little details. I'm not sure if my obsession with recording and preserving the ordinary moment and then attempting to transform it into an interesting moment is the best means to go about living "deeply" or for that matter, if it even results in good writing. But there it is, my only methodology.
Yours &c.
I've been reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl, a book recommended to me by my college roommate last year. The chapter just ended with Hannah Schneider trying to quote the first lines of Walden:
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, to discover that I had not lived.You can see the quotation painted on a wooden panel next to the actual site of Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond, which I visited a week before graduation.
I don't especially associate these words with Walden itself. Instead they remind me of The Dead Poets Society, which is where I first heard them spoken. Actually, I think the movie quotes the whole first paragraph, since the line that I remember most vividly is: "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." How those words echo. To me, they're not so much about Thoreau's exercise in minimalist living but rather about life as revelation, the sense of awakening to the world. The immersion in the present moment, the anticipation of the next. I've met very few people who were able to live like that, but on the occasions when I have encountered such a person, I can't help admiring them for it. It's not a measure of how much raw pleasure or experience that one gets out of life, but the passion that one puts into it.
It's a little sad when I think of all the people I know in real life who have more exciting lives than me--or at least believe they do--and yet live so indifferently. I don't want to live like that. I want to be able to look at the places I pass by day after day and still feel fascination, curiosity. I don't want time to pass by mindlessly; I don't want to look back and wonder where the days, weeks, months have gone; I don't want to wake up in the mornings and want to go back to sleep again. I want each day to be filled to the brim, even with trivial moments, as long as I still notice them.
Sometimes it makes me a little frantic, to think of how much I let slip by, how easy it is to float on the surface instead of plunging in. It is, however, what motivates me to write, because in order to write, one must notice everything, even the most mundane little details. I'm not sure if my obsession with recording and preserving the ordinary moment and then attempting to transform it into an interesting moment is the best means to go about living "deeply" or for that matter, if it even results in good writing. But there it is, my only methodology.
Yours &c.
