Book 4, Letter 1, Part 1 of 2 To Cicero, on consolations for grief

Dear Cicero, if you are well, then I am well. There are so many things that I would like to write to you about, but I find myself hesitating. I have been reading the letters from your difficult year after Julius Caesar took over Rome, a calamity which, though great, seems only a pale shadow by comparison to the death of your beautiful and lovely daughter Tullia. What a terrible year 45BCE was for you. I have found that my passion for reading your letters has waned. I know that from here on the story has too little triumph, and far too much bloodshed. I am looking forward to re-reading your speeches against Marc Antony, which I consider to be magnificent examples of your fiery passion and grand skill as a speaker and writer.

But today I must address, as I have addressed only in passing in prior letters, your grief, and the consolations you found in writing. Though perhaps consolation is too strong a word, and distraction may better describe the usefulness of your literary pursuits in assuaging the pain of your loss. Loss of hope, loss of country, liberty and family. Your letters from this period are full of the advice you give to others, and which they likewise return to you. I begin in the months before Tullia's death...

DXXVII

Cicero To Titius

...Now there is a source of consolation – hackneyed indeed to the last degree – which we ought ever to have on our lips and in our hearts : we should remember that we are men, born under the conditions which expose our life to all the missiles of fortune; and we must not decline life on the conditions under which we were born, nor rebel so violently under mischances which we are unable to avoid by any precautions; and by recalling what has happened to others we should reflect that nothing strange has betided us...

...there is no evil in death, after which if any sensation remains it is to be regarded as immortality rather than death, while if it is all lost, it follows that nothing must be regarded as misery which is not felt – yet this much I can assert, that confusions are brewing, disasters preparing and threatening the Republic, such that whoever has left them cannot possibly, as it seems to me, be in the wrong.

I have been reading a lot of the Stoic philosophers, and the above letter seems to neatly summarise a certain Stoic attitude towards death. If we do live on in consciousness after death, then that life must be immortal, and so, death is not to be feared. If we do not maintain any sensation after death, then it is nought but the release from mortal torment, and thus, death is not to be feared.

Of course, it is not our own death that is the cause of our greatest fears.

DXXIX

Cicero to C. Cassius Longinus

…”Can we laugh, then?” you will say. No by Hercules, not very easily. Yet other means of distraction from our troubles we have none. “Where then,” you will say, “is your philosophy?” yours indeed is in the kitchen, while mine is in the schools. For I am ashamed of being a slave. Accordingly I pose as being busy about other things, to avoid the reproach of Plato.

That reproach from Plato, (Republic 387b), being that men ought to be free and fear slavery worse than death.

Plato

Living as I do in a post-Nuremberg trials world, where the moral responsibility is upon the individual to follow their own conscience during times of war and to refuse to follow orders contrary to the dictates of human decency, reinforces the belief that slavery to a tyrant should be more feared than death. I feel an obligation to follow in Socrates footsteps and to place liberty above other concerns, and yet as I watch the tightening grip of tyranny squeeze my own country, I cannot help but feel that life, even under such a grip, is worth something. If only to remain in peace with my family, to be a father to my children, to remain alive under any conditions seems to me to be right also. I think I understand, Cicero, the contradiction of your conscience that you chose to remain alive, when to die for your beliefs was offered to you as a noble option. Life must continue, for there is yet more good to be done, regardless of which Caesar rules our lives.

End of Book 3: a letter to my readers

Dear readers,

Book three of this blog is now complete, another 21 letters to my dead friends.

Book four is being written. I have found myself standing in the shadows of the Seven Pillars of wisdom, by TE Lawrence, I converse with Epictetus, and and I return at length to Xenophon, Tacitus, Herodotus, and finally, Ryokan, the Zen monk.  There is much more to be learned, and this year I will complete reading the 4th, and final book of Cicero's letters.  I will be reading more of his political speeches, including the Philippics, and I will begin reading his political treatises.  At least, that's the plan.

The last few months have been very productive.  I released a solo album in August 2019, and another in February 2020.  They can be found here: Zebulon Storyteller  If you enjoy music that tells a story, or poetry that asks more questions than it gives answers, then you will likely enjoy my music.

I also have many videos on Youtube, including the complete recordings from the festival show my band put on in 2019.  Iron Dwarf presents: Gil and the Kid - the hard-boiled detective story retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh, complete with a belly dancer, a funk band and puppets.

Gil and the Kid - (Full Video's here)

I also teach middle eastern drumming here in Adelaide, and the last year has seen a great leap forward in the troupe's skills.  I write a study blog for them here...  Drum Arabesque

My new novel is nearly complete.  Monkey and Tortoise.  It is a novel concerning an animal sanctuary where the inhabitants have gained the ability to read and write and speak with the humans who live nearby.  My previous novel, a dark fantasy, The Hangman Tree, is still in proofreading and third draft editing.  Of all my writing projects, this has taken the most time and requires the most concentration to work on.  It is still a couple years away from completion, but I cannot rush the river.

I have started a new blog, In Praise of the Living, where I publish my reviews of books and music performances.  I currently have reviews up for some Adelaide poets who I absolutely recommend, as well as a three page write up of Amanda Palmer's recent 4 hour concert – There will be no intermission.

In other news, I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons with my two sons, and the current game events are set in a fictionalised Rome, where Caesar is a Gaulish War Chief and the popularly elected dictator of the Roman Republic, while Crassus (a shapeshifter) fights Pompey (a half giant) for control of the city, and Cicero, grown vengeful after his exile, has returned to Rome from Asia with an army of assassins, intent on taking over all of Italy.  Then there is the Pirate Archipelago to the north, the Orcs and Wild Elves in the south, and a race of Mind Flayers trying to take over the whole planet from the moon, by psychically enslaving all the Gnomes of Rome, which has led to the unanimous decision of the Roman Senate, to declare: NO GNOMES IN ROME!!!

 The Pirate Archipelago

 Gaul

Rome

To you my readers, I must express my gratitude.  I absolutely appreciate the time you give to read my letters, and I thank everyone who posts comments here on the blog, or on Facebook.  I am always eager to chat.  I am fascinated by the influence the dead have on our lives, but I do not ignore the gifts of the living.

So, I raise a glass and salute the coming year, whatever it may hold. 

Thank You.


Morgan.


PS.  Good luck to us all in coping with the Covid pandemic.  The future is unwritten.

Book 3, Letter 21, Part 3 of 3. To Cicero, on life under a tyrant

Then in January of the next year, (45BCE) writing to Cassius Longinus, you admit your true feelings concerning life under Caesar. The speech of lavish thanks to Caesar, given before the senate, is proved false by the following honest testimony given in private:

DXXIX

To Cassius Longinus

“...Can we laugh then? You will say. No, by Hercules, not very easily. Yet other means of distraction from our troubles we have none. Where then, you will say, is your philosophy? Yours indeed is in the kitchen, mine in the schools only gives me annoyance. For I am ashamed of being a slave. Accordingly, I pose as being busy about other things, to avoid the reproach of Plato...”

Plato, he seems as influential now as he was in you day Cicero. The reproach of which you speak comes from The Republic, 387b, which says that men ought to “...be free and fear slavery worse than death.”

It is a death that I wish now to finally confront. The death of Marcellus.

He didn't come back to Rome immediately after his pardon, but began his journey in the following spring. To refuse the pardon of a tyrant, is to insult him with indifference to his wishes. I am sure that Marcellus' absence from Rome was seen as a continued statement of opposition to Caesar. You wrote him a short letter in January, gently reminding him of your feelings on the matter.

DXXXV

Jan 45BCE

“...Do your best, then, to come at the earliest opportunity : your coming, believe me, will be welcomed not only by us, I mean by your personal friends, but by absolutely everybody. I say this because it occurs to me sometimes to be a little afraid that you have a fancy for postponing your departure...”

A few months later, in May, your good friend Servius Sulpicius Rufus wrote to you with the news that Marcellus had been murdered.

DCXII

Servius Sulpicius Rufus to Marcus Tullius Cicero

May 31^st 45BCE

Athens.

Servius sends many good wishes to Cicero. Though I know that I shall be giving you no very pleasant news, yet since chance and nature bear the sway among us men, I thought it encumbent on me to give you information of whatever kind it might be. On the 23^rd of May, on sailing into the Piraeus, I met my colleague M.Marcellus, and spent the day there in order to enjoy his society. Next day, when I parted from him with the design of going from Athens to Boeotia, and finishing what remained of my legal business, he told me that he intended to sail round Cape Malea and make for Italy. On the third day after that, just as I was intending to start from Athens, at the tenth hour of the night my friend Publius Postumius called on me with the information that my colleage M. Marcellus just after dinner had been stabbed with a dagger by his friend P. Magius Cilo, and had received two wounds, one in the stomach, a second in the head behind the ear; but that hopes were entertained that he might survive; and that Magius had killed himself afterwards. He added that he had been sent by Marcellus to tell me this, and to ask me to send some physicians. Accordingly I summoned some physicians, and immediately started just as day was breaking. When I was not far from Piraeus, a slave of Acidinus me me bearing a note containing information that Marcellus had expired a little before daybreak.

So there is a man of most illustrious character cut off in a most distressing manner by the vilest of men. His personal enemies had spared him in consideration of his character; but one of his own friends was found to inflict death upon him. However, I continued my journey to his tent. There I found two freedmen and a few slaves: they said the rest had run away in terror, because their master had been killed in front of the tent. I was obliged to carry him back to the city in the same litter in which I had ridden down and to use my own bearers: and there, considering the means at my disposal at Athens, I saw to his having an honourable funeral. I could not induce the Athenians to grant him a place of burial within the city, as they alleged that they were prevented by religious scruples from doing so; and it is a fact that they had never granted that privilege to anyone. But they allowed us, which was the next best thing, to bury him in any gymnasium we chose. We chose a place in the most famous gymnasium in the world—that of the Academy—and there we burnt the body, and afterwards saw to these same Athenians giving out a contract for the construction of a marble monument over him. So I think I have done all for him alive and dead required by our colleagueship and close connexion. Goodbye.

Call me paranoid if you wish, but it seems all to easy for Caesar to have arranged the murder-suicide of Marcellus and Magius Clio. The convenient excuse of the debt motivated desperation of Magius, the easy distance from Rome, plus, the elimination of one's enemies had become a time honoured tradition in the generations-long civil conflict of Rome. Sulla practically made assassination legal, so bold and open handed was he in his proscriptions. It seems naive to consider Marcellus' murder to be unconnected to Caesar's wishes, especially if Marcellus was as important and as influential as both you and Rufus seem to think he was.

So, apologetic as I am to bring up this terrible event in your life, I do so in defence of you Cicero. If you are a coward for having submitted to Caesar, then so too was every other able bodied and active citizen in Rome. If you decided that your life was worth the price, then I must agree with you. You believed that your life might still be worth something even under the tyranny of a dictator, you believed that you might still serve the Republic. You chose to suffer whatever indignity might be forced upon you, in order that you might yet defend the virtues and ideals of your beloved Rome.

I can only imagine what heartbreak and self doubt you must have felt, to know that the man you had so encouraged to return to Rome, Marcellus, the man whom you had debased yourself before Caesar in order to secure his pardon, was then murdered. Did you suspect that you had been used? Did you consider that Caesar had given his pardon knowing that Marcellus would only attempt to return to Rome if you begged him? Were you the bait that brought Caesar's enemy close enough to be murdered by his men, and that murder blamed on a money hungry debt-crippled desperado?

Yet Caesar was killed, and you Cicero, would not repeat your much maligned submission a second time, so when Marc Antony rose to replace Caesar, you stood firm against him.

A letter for another day, my dear friend.

With gratitude and respect

Morgan

Book 3, Letter 21, Part 2 of 3. To Cicero, on life under a tyrant

Caesar's account of the Civil War makes him out to be a great benefactor, bringing justice and peace to a society crippled by decades of conflict. He forgives his enemies, he is just in his rulings, returns exiled citizens and does it all with a glad smile on his face. However, Cicero, I found your letters to one Marcus Claudius Marcellus, and within that story lies a window to the truth of what Caesar was really like.

You wrote to Marcellus in September of 46BCE, concerning his reasons for self imposed exile, and of your common feelings about the war. (Letter CCCLXXXIV)

“...But I was conscious of this – that you were not satisfied with the policy of the civil war, not with Pompey's forces, nor the nature of his army, and were always deeply distrustful of it: in which sentiment I think you remember that I also shared. Accordingly, you did not take much part in active service, and I always strove not to do so. For we were not fighting with the weapons with which we might have prevailed – deliberation, weight of character, and the righteousness of our cause, in all of which we had the superiority – but with muscles and brute force, in which we were not his equals.

...However, even if you had already made up your mind, that you preferred being absent from Rome to seeing what was repugnant to your feelings, yet you ought to have reflected that, wherever you were, you would be in the power of the man from whom you were fleeing. And even if he were likely to make no difficulty about allowing you to live in peace while deprived of property and country, you ought yet to have reflected whether you preferred living at Rome and in your own house, whatever the state of affairs, to living at Mytilene or Rhodes. But seeing that the power of the man whom we fear is so widely extended, that it has embraced the whole world, do you not prefer to being in your own house without danger, to being in another man's with danger? For my part, if I must face death, I would rather do so at home and in my native country, than in a foreign and alien land.”

Then in your next letter to him, you continue to exhort him to consider returning to Rome, even though it would mean living under the rule of a tyrant.

CCCCLXXXV

“...But – you object – you will yourself be obliged to say something you do not feel, or to do something you do no approve. To begin with, to yield to circumstances, that is to submit to necessity, has ever been held the part of a wise man : in the next place, things are no – as matters now stand at least – quite so bad as that. You may not be able, perhaps, to say what you think : you may certainly hold your tongue. For authority of every kind has been committed to one man. He consults nobody but himself, not even his friends. There would not have been much difference if he whom we followed were master of the Republic...

...Everything in civil war is wretched; of which our ancestors never once had experience, while our generation has known it repeatedly : but nothing, after all, is more wretched than victory itself, which, even if it fall to the better men, yet renders them more savage and ruthless so that, even if they are not such by nature, they are compelled to become so by the necessity of the case. For a conqueror is forced, at the beck of those who won him his victory, to do many things even against his inclination...

...Finally, if it was the sign of high spirit not to be a supplicant to the victor, is it not perhaps a sign of pride to spurn his kindness? If it was the act of a wise man to absent himself from his country, is it not perhaps a proof of insensibility not to regret her?... The crowning argument is this : even if your present mode of life is more convenient, you must reflect whether it is not less safe. The sword owns no law : but in a foreign land there is even less scruple as to committing a crime...”

What a grim prophecy those last words of yours were to him, Cicero. For you succeeded in convincing the Senate, and Caesar to pardon Marcellus. The speech you gave on that day is a rather stark contrast with the image Caesar paints of himself as a leader of tolerance, clemency and wisdom. This speech, Pro Marcello, seems delivered in a state of terror, before a man still reeking of the spilt blood of his many enemies.

“This day, O conscript fathers, has brought with it an end to the long silence in which I have of late indulged; not out of any fear, but partly from sorrow, partly from modesty; and at the same time it has revived in me my ancient habit of saying what my wishes and opinions are. For I cannot by any means pass over in silence such great humanity, such unprecedented and unheard-of clemency, such moderation in the exercise of supreme and universal power, such incredible and almost godlike wisdom. For now that Marcus Marcellus, O conscript fathers, has been restored to you and the republic, I think that not only his voice and authority are preserved and restored to you and to the republic, but my own also.”

Julius Caesar

If there were any lingering doubt as to the power of a tyrant, it should fade now in the greasy light of this speech of yours Cicero. You debase yourself in giving thanks and divine praise to Caesar, you all but declare him to be a god more wonderful than Fortune herself for his act of forgiving Marcellus and allowing him to return to Rome, and to the Republic.

“But in this glory, O Caius Caesar, which you have just earned, you have no partner. The whole of this, however great it may be- and surely it is as great as possible- the whole of it, I say, is your own. The centurion can claim for himself no share of that praise, neither can the prefect, nor the battalion, nor the squadron. Nay, even that very mistress of all human affairs, Fortune herself, cannot thrust herself into any participation in that glory; she yields to you; she confesses that it is all your own, your peculiar private desert. For rashness is never united with wisdom, nor is chance ever admitted to regulate affairs conducted with prudence.”

I am ashamed for you Cicero.

*

Book 3, Letter 21, part 1 of 3, To Cicero, on life under a tyrant.

Dear Cicero,

DXXX

From M. Tullius Cicero To C. Cassius Longinus,

Jan 45BCE

“I think you must be a little ashamed at this being the third letter inflicted on you before I have a page or a syllable from you. But I will not press you : I shall expect, or rather exact, a longer letter. For my part, if I had a messenger always at hand, I should write even three an hour. For somehow it makes you seem almost present when I write anything to you...”

Cicero, you too are present when I write to you. I can see you sitting in your villa, or in the gardens of your Roman house reading and writing and enjoying, as I enjoy, the pursuit of literary pleasures. When I have a book of yours in my hand, though I sit in the field, or in a tavern, you are there speaking to me. We've been friends long enough now to know something of each other's virtues and vices, and I hope that we can speak plainly to one another. You have led me down a winding road, and here in the darkness of the Civil War, I have come to see and to understand something of the reality of your life. The strenuous terror of civilian existence while armies march and burn and fight. Your family on the run, your friends driven from Italy, your convictions tested, broken, and tested again.

I come now to those dark days of tyranny under the rule of Gaius Julius Caesar, those days in which you condescended to live, rather than to follow Cato's example. This is the time in which you are criticised for cowardice, but I think a more reasoned mind would allow a more generous understanding. All who live under the rule of a tyrant are ruled by fear, for there is no other option. Or as Sophocles puts it:

In every tyrant's court, he a meer slave becomes, who enters free.

(Quote found in : The Works of Plato, abridg'd. Trans. A.Dacier & Joseph Stennet. Jan 1701)

Is a man a coward simply because he refuses to die? You saw the greed and avarice of your old allies in the Pompeian camp and made the difficult decision to return to Rome, to either await the victory of Caesar, and thus the judgement of a tyrant, or the return of your old allies, and your probable execution for deserting their cause. You had said that it was better to die with the one than to succeed with the other, but in the end you chose a third option. You chose to live for the Republic, for the sake of your beloved Rome and for the sake of your beloved children. Yet in choosing to live, you suffered the pangs of your conscience.

CCCCLXXXI

To P. Nigidius Figulus

Sept 46BCE

“...For although no signal injury has been inflicted upon me personally apart from others, and although it has never occurred to my mind to wish for anything in such circumstances which Caesar has not spontaneously offered me, yet nevertheless I am being so work out with anxieties that I regard myself as doing wrong in the mere fact of remaining alive. For I have lost not only many intimate associates whom either death has snatched from me, or exile torn away, but also all the friends whose affection my former successful defence of the Republic, accomplished with your aid, had gained me. I am in the very midst of their shipwrecked fortunes and the confiscation of their property...”

Book 3, Letter 20. To Socrates, an apology.

Socrates

Plato

Dear Socrates,

Holy Shit! They really fucking did it, didn't they? They killed you for asking too many questions. Impiety! Ha! Corrupting the young! God dammit! I can't believe it, 280 to 220 votes. Those stupid sons of goats, couldn't they see?...Ah shit.

I just read your defence speech, given at your trial. It reads like a three part, bar room joke.

First you went to a politician, one who had the reputation for wisdom:

“When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. Then I went to another, who had still higher philosophical pretensions, and my conclusion was exactly the same. I made another enemy of him, and of many others besides him.

After this I went to one man after another, being not unconscious of the enmity which I provoked, and I lamented and feared this: but necessity was laid upon me - the word of God, I thought, ought to be considered first. And I said to myself, Go I must to all who appear to know, and find out the meaning of the oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians, by the dog I swear! - for I must tell you the truth - the result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some inferior men were really wiser and better.”

Then you went to the poets:

“Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to speak of this, but still I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves That showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.”

Then:

“At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom.”

You must have been a difficult person to know, but I think that the hardest of all would have been for you to be yourself. You demanded the truth from those around you, and were fierce in your condemnation of the pretentious frauds you met, but how much harder must you have been on yourself? You held yourself to such an a high and exacting standard, but it was a level of virtue that you had learned to live with. So, at age seventy, when faced with execution at the hands of the assembly, you declared yourself to be equal to your own legend.

“Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing death; if, I say, now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death: then I should be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance? And this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men, - that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.”

I got a copy of your speech from a friend, a tiny and beautiful 1921 edition published in New York.

There is so much in your speech that I haven't brought up, though it is all worthy of reading and discussion. I read your speech this morning, ferociously absorbing the meaning of everything you said, (or at least, everything Plato recorded of the event in Apology...), my heart racing as if I were in the court room with you.

Goddamit! They really did it. They really killed you for asking too many questions.

Well, two and a half thousand years later, I think you're a real hero, Socrates. Above my desk your words now sit, An unexamined life is not worth living.

You're someone I can look up to, and someone I can look forward to meeting in that afterlife of which I know nothing, and of which you might now know something...

With Gratitude and Respect,

Morgan.

P.S. Oh, and your recent portrayal in the Assassins Creed game is excellent.  Long Live Socrates.

Book 3, Letter 19 To Henry David Thoreau, on the wilderness

Dear Mr Thoreau,

The Mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

If all I read of your work was this phrase in chapter one, I would think you to be the dark narrator of an industrial dystopian tale. Yet, this shadow between the pages of your book is only a momentary obfuscation of the glowing light of your soul. So much of your book reads like love poetry, and though you are criticised these days as a bit of a weekend warrior, a hobby farmer with money at home, lauding the virtues of poverty while you live a seasonal fantasy life as a rural pioneer, I find that your love of nature is both authentic, and praiseworthy.

Your writing is beautiful You saw things that were so magnificent they had to be written about. You experienced things in those woods that bear the weight of any of criticism, and for me still stand tall, monuments of poetry and of a rich and glorious delight in the English language.

It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted Huckleberries who never plucked them.

There is a truth beyond the beauty of poetry, and though you point to it, we cannot know it until we have tasted the wild fruit, plucked it with our hands, and felt the rain and sun on our faces. Until we have shivered in the cold and sweated in the hearth, worn ourselves weary with the day and rested our souls with the rejuvenating magic of a hearth-lit fire, we cannot claim to really understand the true flavour of life, of being alive.

I will quote back to you a few of my favourite passages...

This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.

I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame.

Let us settle ourselves , and work and wedge our prejudice, and tradition, and delusion and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say This is and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities if we are alive, let us go about our business.

How ordinarily tragic it is that you died of Tuberculosis, death rattling in your throat and uttering your strange, absurd and prophetic last words; Moose, Indian.

Henry, you have done so much more than inspire a century of readers to find beauty in nature, and to revel in the wonderful poetry of your experiences. You have inspired a century of writers to seek out that wildness you described, and to find it anew in themselves, in ourselves. I would like to share with you something of Mary Oliver's poetry. A friend and I made the music in this little video, and the poem belongs to Mary.

Youtube: Tony & Morgan (with poem by Mary Oliver)

Working on a farm, I have many opportunities each day to see the magnificence of creation played out in the ordinary scenes of nature. It is easy for me to take it for granted and to spend a day failing to notice the brilliant yellow lichen growing on the trees, or to hear the hunting cry of the kite who follows my shadow. But you, Mr Thoreau, remind me that no matter the ills that beset me in life, no matter the grave thoughts that anchor my mind, the beauty and peacefulness that surrounds me must be attended to, lest I should fall forever from the grace and wonderment that is to be found every day, in nature.  Lest I should fall into a life of quiet desperation...

I want to conclude my letter with is this quote from you:

Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds.

Thank God indeed, and thank you Henry. Time has not yet cut down the forest hidden between the leaves of your book.

With gratitude and respect,

Morgan.