Oh Henry

Henry David Thoreau, writing from his little shack in Walden Pond, can indeed be something of a crank. He looks back at the rest of the world, all of those people living in society (SOCIETY!), with a kind of superior sneer, as if he's the only one who got up early while the rest of the world decided to sleep in. And, yet, still ... if you read Thoreau carefully, he offers us some inspiring ideas. For instance, this: "To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts." By the time you read this, we will have talked about it already in class, and if you are especially observant you may have noticed that this quotation is painted on a board on the back wall of my classroom. I draw a lot of inspiration from it. What he is trying to say, I think, is that the living is a kind of creative act, that how you go about living your life -- day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute -- is a form of artistic expression. The day is your canvas; how you behave is your creative tool. The way that you sit at the lunch table and change the conversation in funny way; a joke you tell that brings a few people together; the things you say and do during a class period; how you invent some game with your little brother during dinner. Thoreau is saying that these kinds of things are the equivalent of poems and paintings and sculptures. If you can affect the quality of the day regularly, you are the supreme artist. Personally, I like to think of life in these terms. Makes me feel like I'm creating something new every day.

In this entry, isolate a line from Thoreau and then write about why it makes sense to you. You can use the one I've quoted above -- or find an entirely different one.

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