Talky Tuesday: Walden and Bibliotherapy

I moved! And then stopped updating this blog because I was flipping tired. I'm less tired now, theoretically, because instead of freelancing and hauling ass all over creation I have a proper grown-up office job that means I leave work at work instead of bringing it home and also I have weekends and time off and paid vacation days.

Is that what's bringing me out of my dry spell? you may ask. I mean, sure. In part. Mostly, though, it's the shitshow that was last Friday and the Kavanaugh hearings. It was a shitshow for a bunch of reasons, actually, and not all of them related to Kavanaugh. In my rage and frustration, I turned to my books (cheaper than therapy!) and pulled out Walden.

That time Theophanes and I went to Walden Pond

It's a book I've loved since high school, and there's always something comforting in going back to the books of your formative years. It's like a hug from a loving parent, or your favorite comfort food. But more than that I needed a reminder of what I miss from America, what I'm proud of, to reorient my inner compass.

"Reading" is always my favorite essay in the whole collection. It has precious little to do with anything I was upset about on Friday, but still, it helped. I might even commit the entire essay to memory, so soothing is the act of reading it. For now, two of my favorite quotes:

The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed.

And this one, which struck me the first time I read it. I copied it on to the notebook cover for my English binder immediately after I read it for AP English in the summer before 11th grade; if I were the artsy type I would cross-stitch it or write it out in calligraphy, frame it, and hang it on the wall alongside my bookshelves.

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

The choicest of relics, indeed.