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
Transformative Light Today, Tuesday, sun all day; feel the days getting longer. The slightest variation in light is perceptible only by the way in which it hits certain objects. With the eye, we may notice morning, evening, and noon, by taking into account the incline of the sun, but as for our earth moving in its orbit and the light growing longer or brighter on the hills or the walls of our homes, that feeling and that change is lost unless we take minute observation of our daily surroundings. Light, by contrast, is a transformation of the understanding of the inexplicable; it enlightens but does not clarify our perceptions, and even though it is to make the day longer, it is not a privilege granted for our comfort. Though the object may help us see, it makes us turn our backs to that which we really want to know, and so the languor and discomfort of these ever-widening days is a burden and something careful to be shrugged off. Douglas Thornton