Jo's Boys

I just finished reading Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men and Jo's Boys, and I was struck with how much Louisa May Alcott echoed Charlotte Mason's ideas. I think that Charlotte Mason probably didn't manufacture her ideas out of her own head, but these were ideas that were out and about in the minds of many thinkers at the time, and Charlotte Mason organized them into her own school/curriculum in the same way that Jo March Bhaer used them in her Plumfield school for boys.

Jo's Boys has a chapter that deviates from the boys at the school to focus on the girls who were there, and there's no missing the similarity with Charlotte Mason's own section just for girls. So, with no commentary, I'm going to present, side by side, sections of both books so you can compare for yourself.

The books:

Jo's Boys, by Louisa May Alcott, Chapter 17. Among the Maids

Volume 5: Formation Of Character by Charlotte Mason, 2. Concerning The Young Maidens At Home (I used my own paraphrased version for the comparison.)

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
Although this story is about Jo's boys, her girls cannot be neglected, because they held a high place in this little republic, and especial care was taken to fit them to play their parts worthily in the great republic which offered them wider opportunities and more serious duties.

CM:
It's not enough for them to learn to cook a little, sew a little, and do laundry. Every one of the girls should receive some definite, thorough training in some art or profession that will enable her to earn her own living doing something useful for the world, and something interesting and enjoyable to herself, as all skilled work of the mind or hands is. I think that parents owe this to their daughters as much as they do to their sons. There is valuable training available in many fields of work suitable for women, and at about the same cost as it takes to support a girl at home.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
To many the social influence was the better part of the training they received; for education is not confined to books, and the finest characters often graduate from no college, but make experience their master, and life their book. Others cared only for the mental culture, and were in danger of over-studying, under the delusion which pervades New England that learning must be had at all costs, forgetting that health and real wisdom are better. A third class of ambitious girls hardly knew what they wanted, but were hungry for whatever could fit them to face the world and earn a living...

CM: [One kind of girl] imagines the great things she could do for some idealistic cause, but she's careless about details of kindness, things she says, and routine chores... a little friendly help and advice might save her from a lot of blundering and regret.
There's another kind of girl who has no interests beyond cute clothes. These girls ... view the world as a place for them to have and get, but never, unless forced, as a place to do, to endure, or to share. ... what can be done for the average graduate whose education is supposedly 'finished,' yet who's still rough and uninformed?

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
At Plumfield all found something to help them; for the growing institution had not yet made its rules as fixed as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and believed so heartily in the right of all sexes, colours, creeds, and ranks to education, that there was room for everyone who knocked... the Faculty was composed of cheerful, hopeful men and women who had seen greater reforms spring from smaller roots, and after stormy seasons blossom beautifully, to add prosperity and honour to the nation. So they worked on steadily and bided their time, full of increasing faith in their attempt as year after year their numbers grew, their plans succeeded, and the sense of usefulness in this most vital of all professions blessed them with its sweet rewards.

CM:
School hasn't completed the girl's education, it's only provided a beginning. Now the girl is home to learn how to make the most of herself, and how to succeed in life. How to make the best life is the issue she faces.... A woman who has herself under control, thinks for herself, reserves her judgments, thinks before she speaks or acts, is a woman who will succeed in life. Her success is measured in how generous her heart is, how broad her mind is, and how large her soul is.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
They were busy women, yet on Saturdays they tried to meet in one of the three sewing-rooms; for even classic Parnassus had its nook where Mrs Amy often sat among her servants, teaching them to make and mend, thereby giving them a respect for economy, since the rich lady did not scorn to darn her hose, and sew on buttons. In these household retreats, with books and work, and their daughters by them, they read and sewed and talked in the sweet privacy that domestic women love, and can make so helpful by a wise mixture of cooks and chemistry, table linen and theology, prosaic duties and good poetry.

CM:
Every woman should understand and know how to do every task related to cooking, cleaning, mending or making in the home. A regular instruction time learning to do these things under her mother's guiding eye would be a good way to spend an hour or two every morning. One valuable and extremely useful project is a household book where the young girl writes down exactly how to do specific things, like how to strip a floor, or how to make an omelet. She should write down the exact steps she took herself to do it, or as she observed while watching someone else do it, noting any special circumstances specific to her own house. This kind of reference will be invaluable later because it contains personal experiences, and it will help her to speak authoritatively to her cook or servant who might say, 'I never heard of anyone doing it like that before, ma'am.' Planning meals, setting a proper table, every detail about managing a household for a week or a month, should all be taught and noted in her book.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
...Mrs Amy contributed taste, and decided the great question of colours and complexions; for few women, even the most learned, are without that desire to look well which makes many a plain face comely, as well as many a pretty one ugly for want of skill and knowledge of the fitness of things. She also took her turn to provide books for the readings, and as art was her forte she gave them selections from Ruskin, Hamerton, and Mrs Jameson, who is never old. Bess read these aloud as her contribution, and Josie took her turn at the romances, poetry, and plays her uncles recommended. Mrs Jo gave little lectures on health, religion, politics, and the various questions in which all should be interested, with copious extracts from Miss Cobbe's Duties of Women, Miss Brackett's Education of American Girls, Mrs Duffy's No obtund in Education, Mrs Woolson's Dress Reform, and many of the other excellent books wise women write for their sisters, now that they are waking up and asking: 'What shall we do?'

CM:
Her academic education has hardly gotten started in school, and it needs to progress. She needs to develop her own independent habits of intellectual effort. She should have one or two hours every morning for nothing but solid reading. English literature is still mostly unknown her, so she'll need some of that. She has a lot of history to read--ancient, medieval and modern--and that will relate better when she compares it to her own current history. She probably learned to read some French and German in school, and now is a good time to introduce her to some French and German literature. She'll probably only find time for the best of the novels, the ones that have become classics, except for those occasions when she has a cold or earache or has a spare half hour after dinner. It's very helpful to have a 'commonplace book' or reading journal at hand while reading so that she can jot down any notable thoughts about the author, or her own impression of the book, or a portion of it.
...Give them sincere intellectual work to think about. Let them feel how necessary it is to brace up every faculty of their minds to understand the width and depth of the truths they're called to believe in.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
It was curious to see the prejudices melt away as ignorance was enlightened, indifference change to interest, and intelligent minds set thinking, while quick wits and lively tongues added spice to the discussions which inevitably followed. So the feet that wore the neatly mended hose carried wiser heads than before, the pretty gowns covered hearts warmed with higher purposes, and the hands that dropped the thimbles for pens, lexicons, and celestial globes, were better fitted for life's work, whether to rock cradles, tend the sick, or help on the great work of the world...

CM:
Young ladies should receive some general training and special preparation to help them form fair, just opinions. For starters, a girl should be encouraged to use her common sense to weigh issues that come up...
Young women should also know something about the principles of political economy. ... Any girl who studies it with some thought and effort will be able to form sensible opinions about some of the current issues that are used these days, not just as matters of opinion, but as reasons to justify one social class's superiority over another. It would be good for England if educated women had fair and just ideas about these kinds of issues, not just so they can have something interesting and valuable to say to their husbands and brothers, but so that they can present a different perspective to the men in their lives, and influence them to see a different side of the issue.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
It was good for these girls to hear of the evening-schools supported and taught by women whom they knew and honoured; of Miss Cobbe's eloquent protest winning the protection of the law for abused wives; Mrs Butler saving the lost; Mrs Taylor, who devoted one room in her historic house to a library for the servants; Lord Shaftesbury, busy with his new tenement-houses in the slums of London; of prison reforms; and all the brave work being done in God's name by the rich and great for the humble and the poor. It impressed them more than many quiet home lectures would have done, and roused an ambition to help when their time should come, well knowing that even in glorious America there is still plenty to be done before she is what she should be--truly just, and free, and great.

CM:
..Women have so many rights these days that they can no longer justifiably claim the kind of immunities that secluded harem wives can. We aren't free to say, 'Oh, these things are beyond me; I let the men worry about those kinds of issues.' It's possible that God's Providence has brought women to the forefront in this age so that they'll be ready to act as mediators in these days when there's a dangerous risk of alienation and enmity between social classes. Some thinking people are convinced that we're in the early stages of a revolution. Whether this revolution can happen peacefully without the bloodshed and horrors of other recent revolutions may depend, more than they realize, on the women of England.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Uncanny, isn't it? One would almost wonder if they were the same person! Jo's Boys was published in 1886, which is about the same year Charlotte Mason was delivering her "Lectures to Ladies" that ended up as her first book.

Children are Born Persons, Revisited

As my kids are getting older, and my friends' kids are getting older, Charlotte Mason's "Children are born persons" is meaning something more to me. Or maybe it's just hitting home more.

For years, I've heard that if you "train up your child in the way he should go, when he's old he will not depart from it," and various interpretations of that -- if you train them to be good, they'll always be good, if you teach them right, they might stray, but they'll always come back.

At a recent gathering of moms, one of the moms said that "raise up your children in the way they should go" means that we guide them in the unique direction/career God has planned for them -- as if we could be presumptuous enough to know what God has planned for them. I'm not sure I'd even want to arrange a marriage for my child, much less their entire life.

I think of all the things I've attempted to do with/for my kids, like instilling values, presenting opinions, and nurturing tastes for reading and music -- when they grow up, they choose for themselves, and it might be very different than what I wanted, or even from what I thought from observation was "the way they should go." One of my little boys used to build things. Friends would even comment that he was very good at building things and would someday be an engineer. But, nope, as he's gotten older, I see his interests going somewhere else, and his brother being the one to show an interest in building things as a possible career, and I'm glad I didn't lock the wrong child into that path.

The first time "Children are born persons" really hit home for me was when my oldest son was in maybe fifth grade and showing some talent in his school lessons. I remembered reading about a child back in history who was extremely gifted, and spoke multiple languages. No doubt his parents threw everything they had into his gift and harbored hopes of what was in store for this child. And then he died at age nine of some childhood disease. I don't know what kind of childhood he had -- whether he had been allowed to play, daydream, enjoy nature, and seek out his own interests, or whether he had been pressured to make the most of his time by studying for hours on end because of what he would be someday. But his "someday" never came. In the end, what mattered for him wasn't the hopes for his future, but his childhood. It was all he had. It occurred to me at the time that each child is a born person and may only have a few years to live their life, and withholding any life from them in the hopes of their useful, prosperous future may rob them of what life they have. That was the first time I thought I understood what CM meant.

Now, watching the kids around me -- my own as well as my friends' children -- becoming adults, it's hitting me again. These children we thought we were raising are complete people, very different from us, very much their own people, and they always were. I look around at my adult friends and their opinions and ways of life, and wonder if they're even an inkling like what their parents thought they were raising them to be. The children we've collectively raised represent our contribution of a few full-grown adults thrown into the general population with their own opinions and ways of life, and, in many cases, they are very different as adults than what we saw in them as children. They have gifts we totally missed, or interests it never occurred to us to introduce them to in their childhood, or information gleaned from sources we never heard of.

Sometimes I think that the best we can do as parents is to watch them grow up into adult people, and hope we don't do anything to damage them along the way. I don't say that to sound helpless or despairing, but raising a child is more awe-inspiring and bigger than I thought, and I as a parent have less influence and control than I imagined. We attempt to set their feet in a large, broad room, without really considering the large, broad room we're in ourselves as their parents.

Ownership

From The Grapes of Wrath, which I'm reading for school:

...It's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, and died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours. That's what makes it ours—being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.

What do we mean when we say we own something? The word has different shades of meaning. We say we "own" our clothes, by which we mean they are our property. But we also say we "own" someone as a friend, by which we mean we acknowledge the relationship, not that we possess them. What makes something our property? A book may sit on your shelf, but can you really say it's yours until you've read it and slipped bookmarks in the folds or dog-eared the pages or stuck sticky notes to favorite paragraphs or added notes in the margins or whatever you do with books—in other words, until you've made it yours by spending time with it and letting part of yourself become involved in it? The relationship makes it yours, not the purchase.

About the Teaching of Art

(Cross-posted at In Search of the Perilous Realm)

Should art be taught for enjoyment or understanding? Or can it be taught for both? I've been wondering about that for a few months. Last fall I had some talks with my mom about the place art should have in a curriculum based on relational principles (i.e. Charlotte Mason). Now my college semester has begun, and with it my fourth and final semester of humanities. We've been studying history chronologically, so this semester is about the 20th century. We've already studied plenty of modern art.

I've noticed, however, that all we study are the avant-garde, envelope-pushing works. We've looked at Matisse and Picasso and Munch, watched Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, listened to atonal music and talked about Schoenberg's twelve-tone system. Our discussions of "what's happening in art" during the 20th century have focused on modernism and post-modernism: the rejection of traditional Western aesthetics, experiments with other styles, and the serious, searching art that was produced as a result.

[Admittedly, the literature we've studied—World War I poets, W. B. Yeats, Pygmalion—has been more traditional. (In other words: no Joyce!) We haven't studied the literature as art, however, but as illustrations of contemporary ideas. The WWI poets demonstrate the two ways people looked at the war (romantic, patriotic sentiment versus shocked, disillusioned realism). Pygmalion expresses and criticizes the behaviorist principles of B. F. Skinner. And so on.]

I understand to a point why we ought to study the latest developments in art. The state of the arts can tell us much about the state of a culture. But my question is this: why do we privilege progressive art over works created in older styles, works which may do nothing to advance the art of art, but which are still profound and moving and beautiful? Why the bias towards the new?

I asked two of my professors this question, separately, and got several answers. One professor replied that, in a survey course such as humanities, we have limited time, and have to focus on the tip of the spear, so to speak, as art moves forward. He explained that, once you hit the 18th and 19th centuries, old styles no longer die out as new ones are born; thus by the 20th century you end up having neoclassical, romantic, realist, and a whole list of other styles all being used simultaneously with the developing modernism. That modernism is the new element, so that's what needs our attention. But just because we're not studying the other art of the 20th century doesn't mean it's not important.

The other professor replied that the humanities course is focused on understanding art rather than enjoying it. (This professor, by the way, enjoys art as much as anyone I know.) I may be misinterpreting him, but I think his point was this. When we look at the diverse collection of 20th century styles, most of them are ones we have studied before. Romanticism we met in the 1800s; neoclassicism in the 1700s. So, while artists may still be using those styles, they offer no new perspective on the human condition. The new styles, those that offer a different approach: those are the ones we can learn from. Those are the ones that add something substantial to our understanding of the world.

I think I understand their arguments, but they don't satisfy me. If students are taught to understand art—that is, to analyze it—without being taught to enjoy it, then education has missed the point of art. If we approach a work only to extract its philosophical underpinnings, then we have forgotten how to listen, and if we do not listen, we cannot learn. Art must be experienced, not merely studied. We learn from art only when we respect it enough to build a relationship with it. That means entering without an agenda and without trying to analyze. It means entering with attention, even with humility, to ask the art what it means.

Any good art will be rewarding if we take the time to build that relationship with it. In saying this, I disagree with the bias towards new art. I don't mind learning about the new as well as the old; we have to know the whole history in order to understand where we are now. What bothers me is the tendency to say that an artist must say something new in order for his work to have significance; to say that the only legitimate, honest art is that which speaks in the most current dialect; to say that today's questions can only be answered with today's artistic styles.

If art were like science, always gaining more knowledge, always correcting old theories, then the bias towards new art would be necessary. But art is not progressive like science. An old work of art, or an old style of art, has as much to say to us now as the art that is current. Plenty of music composed in the 20th century was sophisticated and significant without abandoning tonality or aesthetic standards. Vaughan Williams comes to mind, as does some Prokofiev, or later works by Stravinsky. Plenty of literature written in the 20th century was beautiful and meaningful without abandoning traditional narrative structures or poetic forms. I'm thinking of The Lord of the Rings, or the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, or Yeats's lyrical works.

We can gain as much by getting to know these traditional works as we can by studying new styles. Atonal music, abstract art, stream-of-consciousness literature, and the like may be more "advanced" (that is to say, newer). But that does not make them more valid or more valuable than art which says well what needs to be said, whether it has been said once or a thousand times.

Batman Begins: the Untold Story

I just finished watching Batman Begins for the first time with my brothers. They had both seen it before, which put us in the interesting situation of them showing me a movie for once. (An unusual occasion, that.) I enjoyed the movie a lot, but at the same time it left me with an unsettling feeling. In this movie, more than in any of the other Batmans or superhero movies I've seen, you see the vulnerability of good guys. It wasn't simply that the hero had weaknesses, or that he could be injured; that's a given in any good superhero story. This movie made you doubt Batman's ability to save Gotham, or stay a step ahead of the bad guys, or protect the ones he loved. It made you doubt his ability to defeat evil at all.

Batman Begins made me feel how precarious our victories are in this life. The world is balanced on a razor's edge. No matter how many times we save the world, all we're doing is keeping it from slipping. It remains hanging on the edge of destruction. The next battle could very well be the last.

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Read more.

Happy New Year!

In my reading this morning I came across this passage from Psalm 4 which seems befitting for the start of the new year.

Many people say, "Who will show us better times?"
     Let the smile of your face shine on us, Lord.
You have given me greater joy
     than those who have abundant harvests of grain and wine.

I will lie down in peace and sleep,
     for you alone, O Lord, will keep me safe.

I love this. It is at once a prayer for blessing, a song of thanksgiving, and an expression of trust. As the year begins we are all hoping for better days, days of peace and plenty. The psalmist directs us to God, who is the foundation of all our hopes. He gives thanks for last year's blessings, and reminds us that we are blessed whether or not we've had an abundant harvest, because we have been given life and love by our God. Finally, he reaffirms our trust in God by reminding us to rest, to keep Sabbath with God, because it is he who keeps us safe, whether we wake or sleep.

Have a blessed new year, everyone!

Summer's End

I'm sitting on the lawn outside my dorm at school. That may sound lifelessly urban, and I suppose it would be in a lot of schools: but my school is settled right in the middle of a country Tennessee community, without a fence and sometimes without even a road separating them. There is beauty in this place and moment. The sun has set and the sky is glowing russet and pale blue. The woods are so close across the road that I can hear the cicadas humming. A flock of geese just flew overhead, calling the evening bugle of summer as they sped southward. I guess this is really my Beginning of Autumn post, which seems to have become something of an annual tradition. I didn't intend it that way; but for some reason there is a day or a set of days as summer ends that remind me of the season changing and make me want to write about it. Perhaps it is because, as Chesterton said, you realize how much you love something when you begin to lose it. I don't notice how much I enjoy summer until a cool evening or a red leaf on the ground reminds me that it is passing. Perhaps that is why I love autumn so much. After the peace of summer, it is a reminder that the seasons change; that the years turn; that time passes. And that reminder makes me enjoy the seasons, and the years, and time itself, all the more.

A proposal

My mother suggested it, and I really think it is an admirable scheme. One merely needs three hours of time to reflect for every fifteen minutes of life lived, and one would get along quite well. Why, say I, cannot so simple a proposal, whose benefits are so obvious, be adopted? Difficulties arising from hasty decisions and pressing deadlines would almost disappear. The increased volume of poetry alone that the scheme would occasion should be enough to recommend it to anyone. I think I shall contact the People In Charge and see if such a thing can be arranged...

A thought about heaven

Some moments, on our earth, we can catch a glimpse of God in creation: in a waterfall rippling over stones; evening light spilling across the grass; mist descending upon distant mountains. I can't say for sure what causes those moments, when we look at nature and see it as if the divine is being poured through it like water through a funnel (to paraphrase Evelyn Underhill): when we look at a sunset and suddenly realize what is meant by the word "glory," or when we see the brown earth covered in snow and suddenly understand what is meant by "grace": when the world is baptized by the presence of God shining through it. Yet some moments are like that. All of a sudden our vision clears, and we can see God through the world, as we can see the world through a window, or an idea through words, or an experience through a poem. Most of the time our minds aren't aware enough, or the world isn't clear enough, for us to see God through it. But what if we always could?

Imagine a heaven where the world is a perfect expression of God, as the physical man Jesus was the perfect expression of Christ, God's son, the second person of the trinity. Imagine a heaven where our minds have the blinders taken off, so that we can understand clearly all the time: a heaven where the beauty of creation declares the glory of God unceasingly, so that God's presence is with us completely at all times: a heaven where language is perfect, so that every word is the ideal embodiment of the idea it represents. Imagine a world where nature is perfect, so that every stone and tree and blade of grass is a perfect bearer of God to us. That I think would be heaven indeed, when the language of the earth is purified so that it perfectly carries the character of God, so that where'er you walk God's presence is fully expressed to you.

One of my favorite verses is Zephaniah 3:9, "For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they all may call upon the Lord to serve him with one accord." It speaks only of language; but how far will that restoration extend?

A thought

The real value of poetry lies
not in expressing a moment
but
in expressing the thing of which
the moment itself
is but an expression.

Two Quotes

Sometimes when you're reading you find a quote that makes you stop and think--the mental equivalent of stepping on the brake--but you merely note it as you pass, assuming that it was an interesting tidbit which shall quickly be forgotten. But you don't forget it. It stays with you and keeps coming back at unexpected times, like a theme in a Wagnerian opera, displaying its depth and strength over and over again until it gains a place in your mental library of leitmotifs. These quotes were like that for me.

The first is from a book about E.M. Bounds, a Civil War chaplain and writer of books on theology:

[E.M. Bounds]...was never overheard to vindicate or defend his own actions or stand. That intensely human need to explain ourselves and make others understand, what St. Augustine called "this lust of always vindicating myself," was overcome by this magnetic preacher of the gospel.

- Lyle Wesley Dorsett, E.M. Bounds: Man of Prayer

The second is a C.S. Lewis quote that the Headmistress used in one of her posts over at the Common Room:

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination. This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it’s hard to remember it all the time.

- The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (20 December 1943)

May I say that I think this a comforting thought? It means that I don't have to worry about my life not turning out the way I think it should, because my idea of What My Life Should Be was never real anyway. The true meaning of my life isn't what it means to me; it has meaning beyond all my thoughts and dreams, grounded forever in Something that is true and unchangeable. As the hymn says:

My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ my Savior and my God.

I don't understand...

...why the evangelical Protestant church picks and chooses which liturgical holidays it will observe. Christmas yes, Easter yes; Epiphany no, All Hallows' Eve no, Good Friday no. Et cetera. It's the equivalent of reading someone a book and only reading them your favorite parts. There really is more to the story.

Do you ever feel...

...that life is like a run-on sentence? One of those long frustrating things that gallop forward without question-mark or exclamation-point or full-stop or even a comma to slow them down and give you no pause for breath and only hold together with conjunctions of dubious efficacy that stumble over themselves in the mad dash to get to the end of the sentence which is hardly recognizable when you reach it because by that time you've completely lost the thrust of the thing and are only staring glassy-eyed at the words and waiting for the punctuation mark at the end?

My Real Name

(No, this isn't about my "actual" or "real-life" name; it's about my real name, real in a Platonic sense. Also note that this is mere speculation and the reality may be rather different.)

As a Christian, I look forward to the day when I will enter heaven and the Lord will call me by name. But I wonder, what name will that be? The same name I have used and been accustomed to, day in and day out, here in this world? Or will it be another name--a name I have never heard, perhaps, yet is unquestionably mine? A name which I do not know and yet know intimately, as I know myself. The name that I am. The name which is uniquely mine. "Oh," perhaps I will say, "so that's my name. Of course! How could I be anything else?" And of course I will answer to it. No one could help answering to their name.

(I also find the idea of a heavenly language interesting. Zephaniah 3:9 particularly kindles my imagination: "For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they may call on the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one accord." What will that language be? I know, from a passing acquaintance with Tolkien's languages, that certain words seem fit to their meaning: this word is this thing, and could not imaginably be anything else. I often wonder if this might be a glimpse into the reality of language.)

Reflections at Twilight

I sat out on the porch swing after the sun had gone down, alone save for an untalkative baby sister. It was a melancholy evening. Not really mournful, but it had a wistful kind of sadness. The wind seemed to speak of it, while the trees listened, ever moving yet ever fixed in their place. It was overcast: the grey clouds diffused the light and softened the shadows. Green lights twinkled slowly all around. Fireflies. They heard the wind too. The night held something of the sadness of the elves, the sadness for that which passes and cannot be retrieved. I could feel strongly the flowing of time. But just as strongly I felt that I was not of time. I am like the trees: always changing, always moving. But ever fixed, standing still while years and time itself blow past. Time flows, worlds pass, ages are forgotten: yet the human soul lives on.