The Art of Memory When we can traverse the plains of memory, stopping at each fire to warm ourselves before we start again on our journey, there is a world inside a world that keeps going on to infinity. If we are lucky enough to hear the eternal melody that is at work in these moments, many fine hours may come upon us. But sometimes the solace and hospitality are too much and we live with our new found companions, taking them along wherever we go, as a shadow upon our eyes. The memories of Thoreau, or the early frontier narratives of Indian captivity, are something that I have felt eternal and unchangeable in human nature, not for any piece of information they have given me, but because my melancholy has always found peace in their environment. For some the world is old or the world is new, but the point is that we tend to look at it through memory. One memorable event confounds all future celebrations; we remember so as not to forget, but we do not remember that we are able t
November 7th, 2012 The sky is overcast and somehow the more beautiful for it. The resurgence of something, at one time held in the light, gains the absolute clearest perspective when it can be approached on cloudy days. It is not that we see anything new, rather it is the coming into contradiction of our own perception. In that way, what was held of interest once before, now finds conflict with how we must approach it. This is true for the way we read books, listen to music, and try to figure out the tasks of our day, and this is also true of any solution. The lake is deeper with the loss of light, the forest more silent; animals step with an approaching calm, and it is all too easy to forget that we must function with the rising of the sun. The trees have gone from light yellow to dark red in the matter of a week and it is with renewed interest that I take up the terrifying banalities of life. Douglas Thornton