Everyone is complaining about it. "Is it cold enough for you?" (most common); "This is the worst yet"; "I hoped we wouldn't have any more of it"; "Hope it don't last long"; etc. are among the common deprecatory remarks. I love it; I love a blizzard more than a calm winter day. I love nature in her wildest mood. A blizzard, a windy day, a thunderstorm—all of them I love. To experience any one of them is a veritable housecleaning of the mind; some of the dash and spirit of the wind enters into us; on such days we could conquer the world if necessary. Perhaps a calm quiet day has the same effect on someone else. For me, let me have a wild ragged sky, an icy wind, and some snow, and I am content.
What I would not give to be out in the woods on days like this! The roaring of the wind through some dense copse would be the most enjoyable thing imaginable.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Monday, January 12, 2009
Housecleaning of the Mind
Charles Burchfield, Journal (Feb. 22, 1912):