The Outermost House - II
Let me quote from the forward by Henry Beston in January 1949 in the copy of the book that I have:
"Now that there is a perspective of time, however, something else is emerging from the pages which equally arrests my attention. It is the meditative perception of the relation of 'Nature' (and I include the whole cosmic picture in this term) to the human spirit. Once again, I set down the core of what I continue to believe. Nature is a part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man. When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit, a part of very flesh and bone, man becomes , as it were, a kind of cosmic outlaw, having neither the completeness and integrity of the animal nor the birthright of a true humanity."
The Outermost House, by Henry Beston - © 1928
I have read this book (unlike most of the numerous books that I have consumed in my lifetime) several times at intervals each time of some number of years and tonight when perusing books piled in my den-room I picked it up and as it fell randomly open I began to read without volition as easily as one can fall into conversation with an old friend on meeting them unexpectedly around the town or in the street, and the words and sentences lulled soothingly into my awareness of the world around me in those days before I formed in the chaos of this universe so that I was walking the beach at night hearing the ocean, the sigh of the wind, the smashing of the waves, the coolness of the damp and night, the awareness of my own life and it's absence before and after I am here and it is like returning to home in the way that we know we cannot but yet we long to do. Read this book - again if you have read it before, or for the first time if you have been
blind until now, let it sooth you, let it open your awareness to the earth, and
to the sea, and to the night, and to the wind, and to the vastness of what
should be the natural world around you and know that this is the bible of our
senses that we have sought since we were young.
http://www.henrybeston.com/outermost.html
Some countries that view this blog
Visiting countries to the blog this week in order of most to least
United States
Germany
Portugal
Ireland
Canada
France
Ukraine
Italy
Jamaica
Netherlands
there may be more countries but google's stats only list the first ten - one of these times I am going to track it day by day
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