Hello. My Name is Ralph Waldo Emerson.

My name is Ralph Waldo Emerson, and I was born in Massachusetts in 1803. Perhaps you’ve heard of me or my work such as Nature or Self-Reliance? Or maybe you’ve heard of my famous speech entitled “The American Scholar”, of which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. said to be “America’s Declaration of Independence for Intellectuals”.

My education was between Boston’s Latin School and private tutoring; I later went on to study at Harvard on scholarship and struggled with the curriculum due to being the innovative genius of my time.

I followed in my family’s footsteps and entered Harvard Divinity School to become a preacher. Six years after my ordination, I resigned because I thought that formal Christianity only focused on past traditions, and I was more interested in contemporary issues. Have I mentioned that my work ridiculously ground-breaking?

I later educated myself on poetry and writing, and am often referred to as the “Father of American Literature” and one of the first American writers to be recognized by European literary establishments. Not a big deal or anything.

I was a poet, preacher, orator and an essayist; my work was considered controversial in its day, and I articulated our new nation’s prospects and needs through my speeches and through my writing.

I helped many authors get their start; just a few are Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglas, Robert Frost and Louisa May Alcott.

I worked well into my seventies and had my daughter organize my lectures (that moved many) and my journals that inspired new American writers. Work was indeed my life and I kept over 182 journals over my career.

My initial fame came from my critiques of literary, religious and educational establishments. I was known as an experimenter who urged my fellow Americans to reject their regard to old ideas and values to outdated traditions.

Did I mention that I am the leader in the Transcendentalist movement, which is a movement concerning new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy? Yes, the leader.

In closing, I will leave you with a quote from Joel Porte: “Emerson’s fate, somewhat like Shakespeare’s, was that he came to be treated as an almost purely allegorical personage whose real character and work got submerged in his function as a touchstone of critical opinion.”

The Removal of the Veil

So, I have been reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and it has deep apocalyptic themes. By saying that, I just want to laugh at the statement because if one has read it, by saying it has "deep apocalyptic themes", it is the understatement of the century. It is one of the darkest, most sordid and dismal and bleak things I have ever read. Granted, I am not finished with it, and I don't know the outcome, but it cannot possibly end well, and what I have read so far has made me want to cry, to vomit, to throw the book down in disgust - but I just can't stop reading. Oh, and they're making a film out of it, by the way. Can't wait to go to that one! It makes me want to commit suicide just reading it; I don't know how I'll react when I actually watch it.

Anyway, the term "apocalypse" was mentioned in class made me think of this book. And the literal meaning of apocalypse is "the removal of the veil." Dr. Sexson mentioned that everything is indeed an illusion. The world that has ended in the apocalypse is the world that we thought was real, when in all actuality, the curtain has been drawn, and we see now what was underneath - what has always been there but we have failed to see. McCarthy's world is terrifying; it leaves his readers desperate to see this man and his child live to see the next day - a day with no sunlight, with ash falling from the sky, with no food, no shelter, no hope. Is this how he sees our world now? Is McCarthy capable of removing the veil to see all of the ugliness underneath the facade we have created that is our world? I think he views the human race as we are, not as what we perceive ourselves to be. It is all about illusion, isn't it? Without illusion, we would see what is really there, and no one wants that - no one wants to see the truth. It's all a front - it's just an illusion...

"By an apocalypse I mean primarily the imaginative conception of the whole of nature as the content of an infinite and external living body which, if not human, is closer to being human than to being inanimate." -Frye

Here is an excerpt from the book (READ IT - YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED):

http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307387899&view=excerpt

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

I like the thought of being immortalized in poem. Shakespeare notes in many of his sonnets that by him writing them, the person who he speaks of will be remembered forever. Her beauty, her mind, her soul may fade, but through a poem, she will live on forever. What an idea. This is why literature is superior to history and to philosophy. This is why one would much rather (I know I would) read a sonnet rather than a dry account of history from one perspective. In history it seems as if only one person is right; in philosophy, it seems as if no one is right. In literature, however, we are capable of seeing many perspectives, and rather than being right or wrong, we are enlightened with new thought, new knowledge that encompasses our lives - literature connects everything. Give me many perspectives! Give me a rebuttal, such as Sir Walter Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" to Christopher Marlowe's "A Passionate Shepherd to his Love". Neither one of these sonnets is wrong; neither one is right. But they both offer the author's perspective - the author's voice - the author's rebuttal to something they find to not connect with what they perceive the situation to be. Where else can one find such thinking than that of literature? Not history. And not philosophy. Literature is where it's at. Literature is where one will live forever.

Go Vote! (But know what you're voting for).

So, I was doing some research last night to update myself on the issues that will be posted on the ballots today, and I thought that sharing this information would be helpful to some. The site has information on ballot issues, registration, absentee voting, etc. Check it out:

http://www.montanavotes.net/

And if you are unsure of where you should be going to vote, just go to this web site, type in your address, and it will give you the place where you should be voting as well as directions of how to get there! Get off of your asses and go vote, people! You have absolutely no excuse now!

http://www.voteforchange.com/?polling=MT&source=sem-fo-gotv-google-mt-vo-launch3&gclid=CNPioumB3JYCFQ89awodixtL4g

Touchstones

"Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will; to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield."

-Tennyson

"The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity." -Yeats

"Without contraries is no progression." -Blake

So, for the audio and visual portion of this post, I have the one man I can listen to and the rest of the world disappears; no stress, no worries - just his lovely voice. If chocolate could sing, it would sound like Josh Groban. The song is also paired with some lovely imagery of the grandeur of nature - winter, spring, summer, fall - our circle of phases...it's all connected.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNdjML2kquc