Thoreau with Walden. Yes, another pun.

Yes- I've finally finished Walden. Unfurl the mission accomplished banner.

And as I sat scanning the final pages on the bus ride home, I was hit again with what I'd seen in the work that made me so want to read it in the first place. A paragraph jumped out at me to such an extent that I hurriedly scrawled it down in my notebook, cramming the print so it would fit on a single page- and when I approached the end of the quote, in between the necessary bus stops for writing, I became increasingly aware of how hunched over I was, protective of my notebook. And instead of feeling self conscious of it, as I would in another circumstance of posture imperfection, I relished it as though I was a mad genius on the edge of a new discovery.

The quote, which so mirrored my thoughts of the day before I even returned to my reading (or at least, they mirror my thoughts perhaps because my reading of these words bends them to MY meaning, but there really is very little room for additional interpretation- though I admit it does exist, because how could it not?):

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favour in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complete, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

A cerainly not-easy call to action, but a worthy one, I think.

In fact after that point almost the whole chapter, entitled 'Conclusion', wanted to be copied down for re-presentation here or elsewhere, but I mostly suppressed the urge. However, about 7 pages later I came upon a good summation line that I'll leave on:

"There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness."