Well, I ended up just sleeping in long and late this morning and then biking to downtown Wheaton in the rain-anticipating heat-heavy air. I got a little lunch at the French Market to eat later in the park, and am installed in the corner table of a coffee shop, drinking a giant iced coffee and relaxing for a minute before I start three literature and place papers for Romanticism class.
I am listening to the Benedictine Nuns album, as it is impossible to be anything but calm and serene while doing so, and thinking I will go for a walk this evening if it rains. Yesterday's Romanticism class was on literature of the paripatetic (walking), and I have fallen in love with the journal-entry style writing of Dorothy Wordsworth, wife of William Wordworth, who has a rather tragic story (orphaned, raised by a variety of relatives, married William and was madly in love, blissfully happy, hugely overworked, then had a breakdown and spent 20-years in a sort of half-life existence). But she and William loved to walk. And gather sticks, which I found amusing and sweet. Even though her paragraphs are just brisk, efficient lists of the day's events with a few direct observations or impressions thrown in, they convey a practical contentment, especially in her marriage. I'll post a chunk later - I didn't bring my book with me.
"In these divine pleasures permitted to me of walks in the June night under the moon and stars, I can put my life as a fact before me and stand aloof from its honor and shame." Ralph Waldo Emerson
No comments:
Post a Comment