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, 2013 Most often what we fear is not the future itself, but what must be left behind. But this is a strange thought because expectation arrives so quickly that it turns what is around us into a hindrance that cannot be let go of soon enough. But it is also a melancholic thought because if we do not leave, the joy of giving breath to something that was for so long taken away, shall lengthen into the despair of us never feeling the flow of life again. Douglas Thornton