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
March 2nd, 2015 Large flock of ducks flies over so quietly that I only by chance notice them in the reflection of a glass table. Almost all things are part of a world perceived in change and we find that they have been living and existing all along. In the air they are, in the mind they are not, but which truly is their resting-place? Reality is no less flitting than the movements of the eye. Morning rain and fog but soon no trace. Douglas Thornton