In the journal entries recorded in subsequent weeks and months, we meet with no passages quite so ornate or imposing as this epiphany entered on August 13, today, in 1851…
Thoreau made the following entry under the heading “Drifting”:
“Drifting in a sultry day on the sluggish waters of the pond, I almost cease to live – and begin to be. A boat-man stretched on the deck of his craft, and dallying with the noon, would be as apt an emblem of eternity for me, as the serpent with his tail in his mouth. I am never so prone to lose my identity. I am dissolved in the haze.”
~ Professor Alan D. Hodder, Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness (p.63). From Henry David Thoreau’s journal entries on August 13, 1851.
Photograph Credit: Time. Quote Credit: Thank you Makebelieveboutique
Live & Learn 
We should all be so lucky as to have a feeling of being “dissolved in the haze.” Thoreau knew and felt things that some of us may never get to…but we can read his words and imagine that feeling and strive for a “beginning to be.”
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Yes Carol. I happened to read (actually start reading) his book over 20 years ago. It meant nothing to me then. Different picture today.
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Good!…that it is a different picture today. 🙂
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🙂 Yes, yes it is.
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I like to think of it as “immersed,” but “dissolved in the haze,” is a much more stunning image.
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Yes, I’m with you Debra.
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To ‘begin to be’ by losing one’s self..so evocative, yet somehow so very true..
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And “to be” is so very heard “to do”
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Thoreau is so wonderful. I can feel this hazy scene.
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He is Brenda. Me too…
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I too am dissolved in the haze but not so lyrically
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Laughing. Me too. Haze. Fog. Dust. “Me” reminds me of Todd’s pic here:
http://toddlohenry.com/2013/08/13/lol-3/
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perfect–that was me he drew btw
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And me!
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Beautiful…..
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Yes, it is.
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Easy to say if you don’t have to live in the everyday world of going to work and living in a city.
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Hey Grumpy. Get on the Thoreau bus!
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It ith with great thoreau that I thay I cannot buy into it thoreauly. But it’th great to ponder the “what ifth.”
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That is thoreauly funny
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Life and the way we live it has changed a lot and now just like *Generation Gap* there is a *Time Gap* between his and ours.
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Hmmmmm. I think you are younger than most of us. My immediate reaction to his words were: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
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I hope to feel the same way one day.
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…soon.
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