Walden is one of those books you can read every year for the rest of your life and never run dry. I've often wondered if Thoreau ever considered living on a boat, rather than in his cabin, on Walden Pond. Forget what they say about boats being holes you fill with money; you might as easily fill them with the fruit of your own ingenuity. Money is so seldom really needed, I find. What is always needed is time, initiative, and good taste.
Whether by land or sea, though, living outside the village requires guile, a deep guile and cunning that can easily go wrong. It is probably good to remember that both Henry David Thoreau and Ted Kaczynski lived in small cabins. And add this to their difficulties: When they fail and catch fire and explode, they do so in no way comprehensible to their fellow citizens in civilization. A column of black smoke beyond the far hill, that is all that most will ever know of heroic failure of the very personal kind.
Speaking of heroism, I am celebrating 10 weeks of non-stop sailing by further postponing a reunion with my aunt and uncle, and working on my boat.
I haven't touched this boat in two years, and the solid layer of mold and crud on every surface will attest to that. I had to kill several nests of wasps just to get aboard, and several hours were lost in despair and hair-tearing for the job that had to be done. Thoreau would not approve of this aspect of boat ownership. But finally, after three days, things have begun to improve. I haven't decided yet whether boat ownership fits with a policy of voluntary simplicity, but at the very least the boat needs to be fixed, and care of our possessions is among our first responsibilities, is it not? So long as we still own them.
11 comments:
Great to have you back. Where exactly did you float?
If Thoreau had lived on a boat, instead of in a house on his pal's land just outside of town where he chatted with people everyday and ate the food his mom cooked him, I just might be more inclined to credit his philosophy.
Plus, after two years of the "experiment" he took over his family's pencil factory. And don't forget when he lived in NYC.
Walden is a myth or at best an ideal; craziness like Ted K is what happens when one tries to enact it. I'd say, stick with the people.
But I am glad that you are fixing up your boat!
stick with the people. Enjoy your sail. Bring along some fresh food please.
Is it a hole in the water, or just another watering hole?
Obsession, alienation, and being in pursuit of. These are a few of my favorite things…… If you want to venture of the Walden track try Lady and the Panda and the Last American Man.
Voluntary simplicity??? What about mandatory instability? What about taking the tiny time values and weaving them over and under and through each other to conjugate the now and differentiate the future into a miasma of indescernible metric content, free for the taking, shaking our perceptions of purpose and pulse, of society and backbeat, an anarchy of rhythms to unite the masses? Yeah, what about that? Filling all the voids with as much polyrhythmic theory as possible, and then overlaying duple and triple variations to conjure up a steaming mess of broke-beat. You've heard of anti-mater? Well, this is anti-metric, and its baked up daily and served!
Dr. Cajka: Your thoughtful comments on HDT invite a thoughtful response which, thank god, I am not able to provide. However, Ted K would probaly tell you this notion that Walden is a myth is itself a myth, propagated by eastern moneyed surrogate-tasking leftists who wish to keep us enslaved to industrial civilization by making us fear self-sufficiency.
I guess I personally would say that if Thoreau espouses any philosophy at all, it would gesture toward an economics of human interaction, not economic interaction; humane values, not mercantile values; an exchange of kindnesses, rather than an exchange of cash. The fact that Thoreau's ideal makes no since economically is rather more an indictment of our economics than of the ideal. By the way, eastern North Carolina is an excellent place to discuss economics in September, I find. Especially if you've just completed a tenure application.
Metric Instability: I am so glad to be back to a place where I can at least try to keep up with the whizzing, whirring apparatus of your mind. The fact of your metric instability only testifies to the great, broad leaps of your metric vision, able to discern the tiniest of time values, all the way to the fringe of irrational time. I once flattered myself I could simplify life outwardly to leave more mental space for internal rhythmic complexity, probably in hopes of being more like you. But I say without self-denigration that I really lack your fissures. That's why YOU are Chief of Percussion at UVA, for which many congratulations!
Among the finely fissured, you Mr. Robbo, are a standout. I believe that having the fissures is a good thing, well worthy of school procurement. I am sure that frequent poster and obviously well-fissured Dr. Cajka would agree. I also think that they provide an invaluable benefit, of giving the ill-advised ideas and futuristic metric content a necessary place to lay low until the time is right for their emergence. Keeping safely entrenched allows these electrical impulses to avoid being swept away in the antiseptic foam of the daily brainwashing we all are subject to. (nee-sayin Knight) Look! the Large Haydron Collider! (offscreen) Oh great.
What, the little bunny? I'll chop its head off. Oh, I've soiled my armor. Patrick, your words are the sort of brainwashing I would gladly endure daily. No one would take you for a red-ink subversive, and for that you deserve lots of credit. Lots.
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