"I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear..."

"... nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary."

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

That's the rest of the paragraph in Thoreau's "Walden" that begins "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

I'd looked it up when I was writing this morning's post "'Baseball as a Road to God' — the name of a course at NYU" and saying that "my father never went for a walk in the woods." I was big on "Walden" back in those days. Well, you know that. You know the story of me and religion and my high school graduation. It was back in that "Meade's Mud" post.

Remember: "Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place...."

And everything seems connected, now, doesn't it? There's Paris, and we were just talking about France and the French, and whether they're the ones who are not living what is not life.

To put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...

Rout. Cut. Shave. Drive. Reduce.

Meade's mud.

Meade declares that he has arrived at a great new method of making coffee. This isn't how he made it for me, but something he did for himself this morning.



"That's what they call 'mud,'" I say, getting my camera out. As I'm blogging the photographs, he wants to put the instructions his way: "Step 1: Buy the best coffee beans you can afford. Step 2: Grind as fine as possible. Step 3: Put ground coffee in a mug, pour hot water over it, stir. Step 4: Allow 1 minute for grounds to settle — for mud to settle — to the bottom. Step 5: Profit! Enjoy! Salut!"



I'm all excited because mud is a theme here on the blog lately. Writing yesterday about The House of Fallen Timbers, I was thinking  about Henry David Thoreau, who built his cabin in the woods. I dug out an old quote about that, and got quite absorbed in a passing reference to Thoreau's concern with "how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits." What are these "proper pursuits" that are not getting your living, and how much do you try to make time — to make freedom — for the things that are not living-getting? Do you even think in those terms? Perhaps you see getting your living as your proper pursuit, and it involves no loss of freedom. But then why do you see it that way? If you did not see it that way, what would you see? What would be your proper pursuit if it was not doing your job for the purpose of making a living? Perhaps there is another way to make coffee.

But Meade's mud took me back to the comments on the "Fallen Timbers" post. In the comments over there, Milwaukee said:

Henry David Thoreau is much more impressive if one doesn't learn that his mum wondered [sic] out once a week to collect, and drop off, laundry. But he did give us some things to think about, and I have a few favorite quotes, attributable to him, which I mangle. Specifically, the one about 'want to live, so as when I came to die, find that I had not lived.' and the different drummer thang.

Ah, it hurt me to see him diminished like that, because Thoreau had a big effect on me as a teenager, when I was thinking about how I wanted to live — what my proper pursuit was. There was one quote in particular, not any of the ones Milwaukee mangled. It was something with a distinctive word — mud — which made it easy to Google.  I found it and wrote this in the comments on the "Fallen Timbers" post:

I was assigned to give the "invocation" at my high school graduation, and I based it on a Thoreau quote. Afterwards, some people — including a nun — criticized me for not making a more conventional prayer.

Now, I teach Religion and the Constitution in law school, including the case where the Supreme Court nixed all graduation prayers.

My rights were soooo violated, and I was only trying to share a Thoreau quote that impressed me.

And now I share Thoreau quotes with all the world.

This was the quote:

"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business."

Are you going about your business?

Mud.

"Life is made up of marble and mud." — Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud... And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. " — Shakespeare

"I made all my generals out of mud." — Napoleon Bonaparte

"We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars." — Ivan Turgenev

"I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French." — Charles de Gaulle

"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance..." — Thoreau

"My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring, diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?" — Virginia Woolf

"They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies." — Orson Welles

"POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive." — Ambrose Bierce (from "The Devil's Dictionary")

"'As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.' Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva.' Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing." — John 9:5-7

"The broad-backed hippopotamus/Rests on his belly in the mud..." — T.S. Eliot

Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.

Flesh and blood is weak and frail,
Susceptible to nervous shock;
While the True Church can never fail
For it is based upon a rock.

The hippo’s feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Church need never stir
To gather in its dividends.

The ’potamus can never reach
The mango on the mango-tree;
But fruits of pomegranate and peach
Refresh the Church from over sea.

At mating time the hippo’s voice
Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd,
But every week we hear rejoice
The Church, at being one with God.

The hippopotamus’s day
Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;
God works in a mysterious way—
The Church can sleep and feed at once.

I saw the ’potamus take wing
Ascending from the damp savannas,
And quiring angels round him sing
The praise of God, in loud hosannas.

Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean
And him shall heavenly arms enfold,
Among the saints he shall be seen
Performing on a harp of gold.

He shall be washed as white as snow,
By all the martyr’d virgins kist,
While the True Church remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.