Friday, December 11, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society.
I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me.
But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.
The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible;
but all natural objects make a kindred impression,
when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.
When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title.
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.
Nature says, -- he is my creature, and major all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.
I am glad to the brink of fear.
In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child.
In the woods, is perpetual youth.
Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair.
Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a
transparent eye-ball;
I am nothing; I see all;
the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.
The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance.
I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty.
In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages.
In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon,
man beholds
somewhat
as beautiful as his own nature.
Emerson 1836
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Scott Rothstein and Fort Lauderdale
Integrity Passion Commitment
The New river slid by, a moving mirror carrying the voice of a young lawyer standing at the downtowner trying to impress his boss:
"There is this community guilt we all feel in watching someone like Scott Rothstein rise and you know he's a fraud but you're giving him a chance to get it right in time. You hoped his leap was part of your neighborhood's expansion into a world city.
Then your fascination at his crash makes you feel worse as if you were complicit somehow, like the farmers watching herds of people go by in trains.
Can we blame him when he seemed to need to be a fat liar in order to excuse some nerdy moment when his fat kid ass got kicked . He was willing to become a freak. Another with a gun.
His caricatures made up for his lack of intelligence and his fake confidence made everybody just assume, even though Bova never had any more than ten people there and hours went by when noone came in.
Still I will remember these days as we remember hanging out with Robert Conrad in the back mirror room at City Limits and the music sounding better, the smoke cleaner.
This is the biggest story in our history besides Bush/Gore. It will be a great movie and Scott is already taking offers. Scarface, Fort Lauderdale Style, or is it Las Olas Magazine? Levinson can provide the props again.
Why would he come back and negotiate with federal prosecutors without his lawyer?! They knew where the money was long ago, as any one week movement of five hundred million attracts attention. Hell some banks would go under. Is he going to rat on a teller at TD? He has no leverage, there will be no deal. So was it a brave heroic effort to make it right or will he come out looking like this man:
What's it like for him, this shakespearean fall? Walk out of your veyron, G5, jumbotron image and mansion into male prison for ten years and watch your wife sleep with half the town. The political braggart will now lose his temper and rue each second worse. He won't turn to christ or become devout. He will scheme and emerge even more murderous, an aluminum foil corsican. We'll see him when he gets out in the late 20's at a bar named "Stein's" even fatter, and shamefully drunk with tattooed skateboarders, like that big assed white haired guy at Confetti's I remember who's got to be dead by now."
The older man replied, "I'd still hire him instead of you,
in a second."
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