A to Z Blogging Challenge: E is for Emerson and Essays



Image of Ralph Waldo Emerson borrowed from this site

What's the first thing that comes to mind with the word "essay"? Ugh! It's that theme paper I had to write in Composition class, the one where I had to make a point and defend it. No wonder essays went the way of horse-drawn carriages. They're kind of fun to read for nostalgia's sake but not consumed on a regular basis by the reading public. It's more relaxing to do stuff like look for Waldo in a picture than try to see things from another Waldo's (Ralph W. Emerson's) perspective. Take a deep breath and think happy thoughts. Don't tax your brain. It is April, you know, and by now we've all had enough of taxes.

Who writes essays anymore? Actors and musicians are idolized, but other arts are ignored. Yes, writing is an art, even the nonfiction kind. The mind of a writer paints in colors imagined by the reader, with brushes assembled hair-by-hair in experience. That experience can be personal and/or gathered from other writers. A written story continues--while adding to--someone else's story, a thread picked up and added to a skein of yarns:

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand.

Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent. 

Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history...This human mind wrote history, and this must read it. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience. There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time...We as we read must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner, must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly...

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays (First Series), "History," 1841

What are you taxing your brain with or adding to the skein today?

See A to Z Blogging Challenge for links to more "E's" from Challenge sponsors and other writers.

Threads of Thought

Certain threads of my thoughts seem to be cropping up in unexpected places and are causing me some embarrassment. Yesterday I posted about signs and faces, and after posting I navigated over to Carol's site where I found she had posted on Monday about seeing a face in a stepping stone. Yikes! I felt my face redden as I thought that anyone reading my post after having read hers would think I am an idea thief! Then I went to Sarah Laurence's blog and saw her post which included unusual signs. No way! What is going on here? I took the photos Sunday on our hike and pieced an idea together in my head, but, unfortunately, I didn't fully assemble the idea and post it until Thursday. Procrastination has gotten me into trouble before, but it usually just involved burning the midnight oil to finish a term paper, a problem for my eyes only (and maybe the teacher's), as their redness gave evidence of my "sin" the next morning in class.


Now, my procrastination has leaped into cyberspace and exposed me as a possible idea thief! Wait a minute, now. My sister Ellen and I were discussing something along these lines on Tuesday when I had a visit with her and my mom for an early Mother's Day lunch. After eating lunch at Hunan's in Carbondale, we went to Ellen's house for dessert and tea, and she let me have a peek at the gift she is assembling for me. Isn't it gorgeous? She says it is a stack-n-whack quilt.


Sounds intriguing, doesn't it? Apparently, all of the blocks in the quilt are pieced together in kaleidoscope fashion from one piece of fabric. I asked her if the idea was hers, but she said she found it in a pattern book.


Aren't patterns kind of like recipes, I wondered out loud? The woman who published the pattern book "cooked" up what looks like a novel idea, but she probably just drew on years of experience with various styles of quilting to put a new twist on what had come before, adding a bit of her own creative flair to the mix. We would all like to think we have a truly original idea sometimes, but then something comes along to show us that, no, our thoughts are merely tied to some bigger, more elaborate, and deliberate pattern.