Progymnasmata
I Go to My Walden in a Business Suit
by , 04-21-2009 at 10:24 AM (1782 Views)
NOTE: this entry was originally written as a forum thread. The thread died out before it even captured a spark. Maybe it was better meant for a blog.
Here it is:
Walden has meant more to me than any other book. Some of my favorite passages are Thoreau's descriptions of his interactions with the lakes and ponds around his cabin. Passages like this one, for example:
"In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, and saw the perch, which I seemed to have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon traveling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest."
Several years ago, I worked in marketing for corporate America. The work never suited me, but the job paid well. I did my best to fit in with the suits, the golf club members, and the stock watchers who worked there with me, but I was pretty unhappy. There was, however, one thing that I did that gave me more joy than almost anything else during those years. Every day at noon, I would drive about two miles to a secluded pond to read Walden and have my lunch by the bank of a murky pond while in my business suit and shiny black shoes.
And here's the really weird thing: after I scarfed down my sandwich, I read Walden aloud, to myself. I needed to hear the living words in the woods. Moreover, I needed to a way to balance the compromises I had made for my daily bread, my daily "beans" (Walden reference). In time, I kept a daily journal of my time in that exact spot; I wrote about the rock I sat on, the flora and fauna round me, for that exact hour, every day. It was my own little Walden at noon. I've moved on since then, but I've never moved on from Walden.
I still laugh at the picture of me in a business suit in the middle of the woods reading to myself out loud.
Go to Profile
Mark as Read
