Walking, for me, is a form of transportation. I walk to get somewhere, or to get away from something, and depending on the place I want to go or the thing or person I want to get away from I might go a little faster, maybe even a lot faster. So I don’t really consciously notice the environment I’m walking through until I have to, like when I think a car might run me over, or when I might run into a tree or slip in a puddle or all that jazz. Emerson might call me someone who does not have an “attentive eye”, or someone who is not a “poet”. He says that, “To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before and which shall never be seen again” (10). This very sentence inspires such awe in me because I know that I will forever be comparing what I am seeing to what I have seen before. I will compare this autumn to last autumn and such until they run together and blur into one autumn. I have no doubt that each autumn is different, but aren’t the leaves always going to change, and essentially aren’t they always going to change in a similar manner? Sure, we are always viewing them under different light. Things look different in the morning than they do in the afternoon, and different when they are bathed in candlelight than flooded with fluorescent. Is this what Emerson was talking about? Is this what it means to have an “attentive eye”, because I can’t help but think that he means more than that, but then again perhaps he doesn’t. Almost anyone can notice that something looks different, or feels different at different times and depending on different conditions. I almost think that the key to this phrase is that the idea that you will never see it again. What does he mean by that? My simple mind wants to ask “Does he think you’re going to die tomorrow?” but in reality I know that it’s something much more along the lines with, “You’re constantly changing, so you aren’t going to look at things the same way ever again”. Except we do. Something about us is stable, even Emerson points it out: “a low degree of the sublime is felt, from the fact, probably, that man is hereby apprized that whilst the world is a spectacle, something in himself is stable” (26). There is some reason why we don’t go walking around looking at the world upside down. I mean we can, we have the ability (well, the walking part might make it interesting…) but we choose not to. So how can we be constantly changing when there is in fact something about us that is stable? Or do we consist of parts, and are there certain parts of us that change and others that remain the same?
Anyway, to get back to the beginning of my discussion, I walk to go somewhere so I frequently don’t notice where I am until I get to where I am going. I took a solitary walk (as solitary as it could get here) and couldn’t help noticing how hard it was to get away from people, or even just human influence. For the majority of my walk there was someone in front of me and I kept hoping that they didn’t think I was a total creeper. I wasn’t following them, but I wasn’t supposed to say anything so I couldn’t tell them that. Under my feet was pavement, but around its edges were nice green things, some that I knew the name of like the wild asters and others that I didn’t like the weird vine I thought might be poison ivy but wasn’t really. I wanted to walk on the grass (not near the suspicious plant that could quite possibly make me itch all over), just to get further away from people, from things that they had made, but I couldn’t find a path. I know this sounds ridiculous because of course a path is man-made too, but I felt awkward about walking where there wasn’t one and there was already so much tar, almost as if they put the tar down to keep us from walking on the already willing green grass. So instead of coming back from my walk to nowhere refreshed as I expected, I came back frazzled. I didn’t reach the place that was disconnected to the human world, I didn’t reach that Nature, but who’s to say that the place I was walking in wasn’t nature? Humans are a part of nature, just perhaps not that Nature…
I found this to be a very interesting port Diana because it not only got me thinking about my reactions to nature when I get a slight chance to try and appreciate it for for what I think it is, but also to really think about what nature actually means to humans. Like you said, id the nature that we see as humans the nature that Emerson claims we don't really see unless we have an "attentive eye?" Because of Emerson's claim that people such as "poets" and I'm assuming artists have that heightened sense needed in order to actually appreciate natureis preposterous. I think that as humans, like you said, there is something about is that is stable and something that we are able to go back to in our minds that brings back memories and reminds us what about nature it is that we loved so much the first time. I think if we didn't have this stability, it would be impossible to point out beauties and appreatiate nature because we would constantly be remolding our idea of what is beautiful in nature and therefore, nothing would ever be beautiful because we wouldn't have a set basis to call beautiful, something that I think we as humans do with almost everything. Do I think that we as humans can be surprised by nature and grow to find things beautiful that we once thought were not, of course. However, I don't think that Emerson's claim that only "poets can understand nature for what it really is is fair because everyone's basis for finding beuaty in something is different, even though it seemes as though we have a universal of beauty, especially when is comes to nature.
ReplyDeleteI find it completely interesting that you suggest that perhaps we as humans don't see nature in its truest form because it is constantly being tainted by humans. I think that this claim is perfectly exceptable because I think that because of all the harmful things that we have doine to the enviorment, it is virtually impossible for us to even see the nature that Emerson was so passionate about. The most interesting thing that I found about your entry was the idea of staying on the tar rather than walking in the grass and hence, making a path of your own in order to explore a more true nature. This reminded me of one of Emerson's famous quotes that reads, "Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." The fact that you were drawn to the idea of making your own trail I think is both part of human nature as well as a want to find a more concrete answer of what nature really is. I think as humans, we are constantly interested in leaving our mark on something, in this case, what Emerson calms as, "leaving a trail." However, in doing this, we are somehow interrupting the natural order of things, the nature that we were out to seek. I find int interesting that Emerson encouraged us to leave our "own trail" because it seems as this would take away from the "nature" that he claims we can't see for what it really is.