God Knows How Many Things A Man

Every Time We Walk Along A Beach Some Ancient Urge Disturbs Us So That We Find Ourselves Shedding Shoes And Garments Or Scavenging Among Seaweed And Whitened Timbers Like The Homesick Refugees Of A Long War... Mostly The Animals Understand Their Roles, But Man, By Comparison, Seems Troubled By A Message That, It Is Often Said, He Cannot Quite Remember Or Has Gotten Wrong... Bereft Of Instinct, He Must Search Continually For Meanings... Man Was A Reader Before He Became A Writer, A Reader Of What Coleridge Once Called The Mighty Alphabet Of The Universe.

A Man Who Has Once Looked With The Archaeological Eye Will Never See Quite Normally. He Will Be Wounded By What Other Men Call Trifles. It Is Possible To Refine The Sense Of Time Until An Old Shoe In The Bunch Grass Or A Pile Of Nineteenth Century Beer Bottles In An Abandoned Mining Town Tolls In One's Head Like A Hall Clock.

It Is Frequently The Tragedy Of The Great Artist For Example Vincent Van Gogh, As It Is Of The Great Scientist, That He Frightens The Ordinary Man. If He Is More Than A Popular Story-teller It May Take Humanity A Generation To Absorb And Grow Accustomed To The New Geography With Which The Scientist Or Artist Presents Us. Even Then, Perhaps Only The More Imaginative And Literate May Accept Him. Subconsciously The Genius Is Feared As An Image Breaker; Frequently He Does Not Accept The Opinions Of The Mass, Or Man's Opinion Of Himself.

From The Solitude Of The Wood, (man) Has Passed To The More Dreadful Solitude Of The Heart.

God Knows How Many Things A Man Misses By Becoming Smug And Assuming That Matters Will Take Their Own Course.