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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: October 29th, 2012 (With Audio)


October 29th, 2012

The 27th was the first day of autumn--a faint chill and pelting rain; the trees taking on different colours, the ferns rusting away.  One day we wake up and it is spring, another winter; for we call the first of things pure: the first taste, the first scent; but the first expression of autumn, the first realization that our earth is moving further away from the sun, in that thought alone there is the greatest solitude.

Daily life has a great warming effect to it--it is wonderful to be caught up in our habits and see from within the season changing.  Haste, anxiety, and dread, all take on new meanings, those of which we can recede into and find relief in the fact that our own storms and our own frailties are matters less eternal than the wind.  It is even soothing to rediscover a pressing need and find that the importance given to it was but an illusion caused by the summer months or the full moon--in reality, we don't know.  The way we feel a certain look, the way we take someone's word, are all open to the many interpretations among which only one may please us, and we stand to it with a conviction of iron.  It is good to have opinions, but when the seasons change and the snowflakes fall, let them travel into that furthest solitude and then we shall see what comes back to us.

Douglas Thornton

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