Double Mirrors

It’s an interesting notion, that if something is rare, it should cost a great deal, and turn a large profit. And it’s just as interesting, that if something is free and readily available, it should be thought of as common, and not rare at all. How different the world would be if supply and demand were guided by love, kindness, compassion, and wisdom.

To one degree or another, we are hustled by electronics.

Imagine finding little libraries where one least expects them — in grocery stores, department stores, and barbershops.

Mid-morning. Rain. After an indoor exercise session of breathing, bending, stretching, and even a few push-ups, the clouds parted, so I quickly donned my black wool cap, rain-jacket, and sandals and went out for a walk. The air was cool and fresh and clean, and there was a strong breeze from the southwest. I could see the next wave of moisture headed my way. I could also see a hawk riding on the current, hurried along by the wind. I skedaddled around the block and was home again just as the rain began.

Read the seventy-second, seventy-third, and seventy-fourth chapters of Middlemarch. “Full souls are double mirrors, making still / An endless vista of fair things before, / Repeating things behind.”

Thoreau’s journal, March 6, 1854. Lingering Snow. Heard and saw the first blackbird, flying east over the Deep Cut, with a tchuck, tchuck, and finally a split whistle.

Found on Page 19 of The Oxford Book of Aphorisms, under the heading of Religion: “All religions will pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance.” —V.V. Rozanov, Solitaria, 1912.

Read The Rambler, Numb. 15. Tuesday, May 8, 1750. Letters from two women on the subject of gambling.

What age so large a crop of vices bore, / Or when was avarice extended more? / When were the dice with more profusion thrown? —Dryden.

Be pleased, Sir, to inform those of my sex, who have minds capable of nobler sentiments, that, if they will unite in vindication of their pleasures and their prerogatives, they may fix a time, at which cards shall cease to be the fashion, or be left only to those who have neither beauty to be loved, nor spirit to be feared; neither knowledge to teach, nor modesty to learn; and who, having passed their youth in vice, are justly condemned to spend their age in folly.

October 25, 2023.

[ 1908 ]