Monday, January 01, 2007

Thoreau on Being 'Unschooled"

These balloonists didn't crash land, but we held our breath as they struggled to stay aloft just off my kid-sis's deck in Colorado Springs. Amateurs I guessed , but they managed to gain altitude and floated gracefully away.

Patrice and I had a brief blog exchange about our attempts at poetry and shared that we are both rather unschooled in the art of poetry writing. Minutes later I checked in on The Blog of Henry David Thoreau and found this which made me smile:

Thoreau's Journal: 02-Jan-1859

Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat. The grammarian is often one who can neither cry nor laugh, yet thinks that he can express human emotions. So the posture-masters tell you how you shall walk,—turning your toes out, perhaps, excessively,—but so the beautiful walkers are not made.

4 comments:

dmmgmfm said...

That is an amazing picture. I've always been fascinated by hot air balloons. Thanks for sharing!

Bonita said...

Hmmmmmmm. Imagine, had someone been having a cuppa'tea right by that window. Then, company dropped .... down. I do see a bit of a chuckle there.

Anonymous said...

For a few years, there were a lot of hot air balloons around here, but we see them less frequently now. We've seen more than a couple hit the treetops as they struggle to get back up into the air after dropping too low. A few years ago, one of the balloons tried to launch in our neighbour's field on a very windy day. They ended up setting part of the balloon on fire -- it just went whoosh and disappeared in a flame (it was that section they use to contain the heat from the flame while filling the balloon). After seeing how instantaneously that happened, I now have absolutely no desire to go up in a balloon. (-:

Cathy said...

Laurie - Yep, pretty amazing what people will do for kicks - read Bev's comment above.

Bonita - Yes, by all means drop 'in' for tea, 'down' - don't bother. Subtle directional shift - huge effect:0)

Bev - I have a few great failings - one of them is to 'try' to maintain a sense of control. 'Control' doesn't seem to be a huge concern for balloonists as in the phrase "wherever the wind blows me". Add a big hot flame - No thanks :0)