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| Woodstock Place |
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Fall Colors
Within the past couple of days something in the air seems to have accelerated the arrival of the fall season and triggered the abrupt change of colors of the leaves on all the deciduous trees around us. Bright yellow, orange, and russet infuse the atmosphere with an eerie golden tint, like the sky at dusk or upon a pending storm. A sustained wind of about 15+ mph has been blowing over our area since yesterday evening causing the leaves to rain down on the ground like confetti. I went outside on three separate times this morning to take some pictures of the amazing fall colors. Here is a slide show I made of the pictures -
An Island Unto Herself
The following is a striking passage I heard on my Audiobooks app. last night. I've always thought that it is impossible for one person to really understand another; it couldn't have been said better than this:
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Book One, Chapter Three, Night Shadows -
(click the link to hear the passage read)
"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?"
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Book One, Chapter Three, Night Shadows -
(click the link to hear the passage read)
"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?"
Or this, a lighter take on the same theme -
"That is the case with us all, Papa. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."--Jane Austen, Emma
A more positive view on the human condition is expressed in John Donne's No Man is An Island -
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
What is your take?