Thursday, November 24, 2016

John Muir: life in the mountains

The following is an excerpt from John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir.

79
"These beautiful days must enrich all my  life.  They do not exist as mere pictures--maps hung upon the walls of memory to  brighten at times when touched by association or will, only to sink again like a landscape in the dark;  but they saturate themselves into every part of the body and live always."

-- John Muir --
from John Muir: In His Own Words


It's the same when I listen to my favorite musical works, the ones that I don't just hear,  but I can feel in my bones

15 comments:

  1. it's Vivaldi for me; i've his Concerto for Diverse Instruments careening through my head for over fifty years; and some of his oboe concerti... nature must have been like that for Muir, also: that feeling that oneself and the surround are one...

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    1. Mudpuddle,

      I know what you mean. For me, it's a number of Beethoven's works--symphonies, sonatas, concertos-- Tchaikovsky's 1st piano concerto, especially the 1st movement and others.

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  2. Such moments in Nature have seemed to me a hint of Heaven; if Heaven exists, it must be one of those moments without end.

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    1. R.T.,

      I have found time to act strangely during those moments. The Grand Canyon is the only sacred place I know. I sit at the edge, away from the crowds, and go away somewhere. When I return, I feel sometimes that I have been there for hours and it's been only a few minutes. Other times, it's the opposite, for I find I've been sitting there for an hour or so, even though I felt it was only a few minutes.

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    2. Fred, when I read your first sentence, I misunderstood. I thought you had acted strangely. I'm relieved that time was the actor. Your experience reminds me of the strange place between being awake and asleep. Those have been some of my most out-of-this-world moments. Weird.

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    3. R.T.,

      Chuckle...Well, I have had my moments.

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    4. R.T.,

      Were those "out-of-this-world moments" tied to a particular place or time?

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    5. No, Fred, those moments are just hypnotic nothingness, suspensions between reality and God-knows-what else, not a bad place to be every now and then.

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    6. don't think i should get into this discussion; suffice it to say, "me, too"....

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    7. R.T.,

      Frequently a very good place.

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  3. Replies
    1. if you'll remember i have a tendency to rattle on about things people don't want to hear about; so i try to contain myself to acceptable repartee... after all, civilized behavior is the vade mecum, nicht wahr?

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    2. Mudpuddle,

      Then people don't have to read them. I hope I've never shut you off here, even unknowingly. If I have, then please accept my apology.

      As for civilized behavior, it appears to be of lesser importance today than in the past. Or, perhaps it's just a different type of civilized behavior which I'm unable to recognize as such.

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    3. no apologies needed; life is a school: those of us who think, are constantly braving the wilderness of understanding... i've thought that "civilized behavior" is the grease that lets the juggernaut creep... currently it's at a standstill...

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    4. Mudpuddle,

      Or maybe creeping backwards?

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