Walden

I think there are few ways to read Walden well.
I read and walk, a brisk pace around the wooded trail. I likely juxtapose well with the simple nature of the woods, in my skirt and long black coat, reading as I cross by the swamp on the wood-chipped trail, but really, it's the air, the motion of walking to make me focus, or maybe focus less.

"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."

Billy Joel's "My Life" on my mp3 player as I read about the despair Thoreau, an educated man, has for those with farms, doomed to work. As he sat and watched his pond, I wonder if he considered the meditation of exertion? It can slow the mind until the thoughts appear more clearly. His writing is dense, with a rapidly churning flow. Perhaps he should have walked faster, or thought more slowly.

"It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live."

What a delicious irony.
If I looked up from this book, which despairs of the little time people take for their world, I could absorb the forest, finally green in more than slal and fir, with cedar mixed in.

"I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous."

The trilliums are blooming. They are white, perfect trinities by the side of the path.
Is that a frivolity?
It makes me glad.
I sometimes wonder that we can try so hard to be deep-thinking, but it is difficult to say. Perhaps he was hoping that we would leave the frivolities of our lives, such as philosophical books, and see the flowers at our feet.
Is this a statement or a cleverly phrased ambiguity?

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

A man who would not talk of himself if he knew anyone else is scarce in a position to generalize, but I suppose we all do.
Who will despair of our lives if we do not?
Oh. Right.