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Reflecting Thought

  There is often little time for reflection though the hours never cease to pile up.  Much is thought of, many things are remembered, but little is reflected upon.  There is a difference between thinking and reflecting; one of them presents a plan or an image, which is transformed according to feeling, or exterior phenomena that seeks an end, or a means to an end; the other is the transformation of thought without end, it simply looks, it watches the worry come and go, plans arise and finish.  When you step back from a wall, you can see how high it is, but when you are very close, you must grasp onto something because there is no way to see where you are.  So reflecting is a way to stand back and see how far the thought goes, while thinking holds to the thought as long as it wants.  Reflection shows that thoughts do not control you, while thinking always seeks a thought to control. Douglas Thornton
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A Poet's Journal: November 7th, 2012 (With Audio)


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

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