To Hear With Eyes

My body language — the way I walk, sit, and stand — would it be the same if I had no clothes? How much of my physical attitude and self-perception is in the clothing I wear? How much of my perception of others is in the clothing they wear? When we meet, do we meet each other, or do we meet each other’s clothes? We’re born naked, wearing a uniformly uniformless style. Children of the sun, cold when winter comes. Flesh of our flesh. Sit by the fire. Let’s stay and warm our bones.

The little cup of coffee. The funny, well-worn hat. Someone stops to look at me. I let it go at that.

Lightly trimmed the lower branches on the west side of the cedar, with the idea of using the driveway as more than a sidewalk.

Moved the picnic table and benches back into the little shed behind the house.

Moved five bags of potting soil from the garage under the picnic table.

Moved an old, narrow, homemade, unpainted table uncovered a few weeks ago while straightening things in the shed to the garage as a likely perch for overwintering plants.

Read the twenty-seventh chapter of Middlemarch, finishing the first volume of three.

“To hear with eyes belongs to love’s rare wit.”

Or, from Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXIII, “To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.”

Read Thoreau’s journal, entries for Febrary 20, February 22, February 23, and February 24, 1854. Skating to Fair Haven Pond; new-fallen snow; snow drifts.

Not that ornamental beauty is to be neglected, but, at least, let it first be inward-looking and essential, like the lining of a shell, of which the inhabitant is unconscious, and not mere outside garnishing.

On the internet, most every day I encounter expired or broken links; whereas, in this room, there are books hundreds of years old, each still vital in its connection, and which can be touched, held, smelled, examined — given, too, and passed on. I make no judgment; I’m comfortable online and see its merits, but I still feel more at home with paper and the printed word. Online, ten years is ancient history. In this room, a hundred or two hundred years is the present made perfect.

September 20, 2023.

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