Friday, August 4
Rainy Day Read
A Dartmoor Tor
A slight aside today for today's meandering
'The personal diary, that daybook of the soul, is not meant for other gaze. There is a delicacy, secrecy about the functions of mind and soul. You do not wish others to see what you have written and blush at the thought of half a line being read over your shoulder. And the better the diary is kept the more private and personal it becomes.
It may be asked what possible interest there is in these things I am now recording, but that is my affair. For a long time now I have been writing without a reader. If some one reads, that is his lookout; I do not invite him. One resolution I have made, and will carry out, and that is to print all.
Today I take stock of life and thought and all good things that are mine; Tomorrow I will swing all day on the garden gate singing a nursery rhyme; the day after I shall put on my hat and go to the city; I shall promenade at night.
Something will occur sooner or later, and I shall say, "Hah, my diary, my tablets, my ink fountain, that I may write down something special and wonderful and curious that has occurred to me this day".
Every entry is a shade of self-confession, and the whole, when duly entered, is a passage of self-knowledge.
One advantage of being a true Bohemian is that you are under no compulsion except that of the heart. You stop when you like, you go on when you like. You surely come to places in which are tempted to remain - be it only for a couple of days. You stay a day, and the place grows on you; You stay longer; And then, when the spirit moves, you move with it, move on, enriched by your delay, by your idleness.
Copyright 'The Gentle Art of Tramping' published (1936) and said far better than I ever could.
You know where the comment button is.
Labels: books
A Dartmoor Tor
A slight aside today for today's meandering
'The personal diary, that daybook of the soul, is not meant for other gaze. There is a delicacy, secrecy about the functions of mind and soul. You do not wish others to see what you have written and blush at the thought of half a line being read over your shoulder. And the better the diary is kept the more private and personal it becomes.
It may be asked what possible interest there is in these things I am now recording, but that is my affair. For a long time now I have been writing without a reader. If some one reads, that is his lookout; I do not invite him. One resolution I have made, and will carry out, and that is to print all.
Today I take stock of life and thought and all good things that are mine; Tomorrow I will swing all day on the garden gate singing a nursery rhyme; the day after I shall put on my hat and go to the city; I shall promenade at night.
Something will occur sooner or later, and I shall say, "Hah, my diary, my tablets, my ink fountain, that I may write down something special and wonderful and curious that has occurred to me this day".
Every entry is a shade of self-confession, and the whole, when duly entered, is a passage of self-knowledge.
One advantage of being a true Bohemian is that you are under no compulsion except that of the heart. You stop when you like, you go on when you like. You surely come to places in which are tempted to remain - be it only for a couple of days. You stay a day, and the place grows on you; You stay longer; And then, when the spirit moves, you move with it, move on, enriched by your delay, by your idleness.
Copyright 'The Gentle Art of Tramping' published (1936) and said far better than I ever could.
You know where the comment button is.
Labels: books
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