Thoughts have wings.

Today a person in Tajimi, Gifyu, Japan read my post, "A Passion for Life," and then read my profile. My visitor was at my site only a minute and 12 seconds, but that was enough to pique my curiosity. How on earth would an unknown person half way around the globe happen upon this obscure (circa 1982) piece of my writing? It was via a Google/Japan search on the words "passion life."

That's the thing about writing. My author thoughts are carried over time and space to the page, the element of the transaction from which the reader captures those thoughts like a butterfly in a net. My part is to set the words down, your part is to pick up on those words. You're going to understand literally what I say, but you will also understand history, emotions, spirit -- those things behind my words that you infer because you are a fellow human being and understand something of what that is about.

The initial flight of thoughts 26 years ago was from my heart, to my head, to the paper. The newsletter with my column went to probably 400 people. Perhaps one in 20 actually read it. And then the original page, for whatever reason languished is a file box full of miscellaneous papers that I compulsively gathered. I am setting these thoughts down on a page in my Dell Inspiron 9100 notebook computer. And book shelves line three of the four walls here in my office/library.

Many years ago I began collecting antique school text books. From my stacks I give you a sample of the oldest Thoughts With Wings (faded and leather bound) that I can find:

• Roget's Treasury of Words, by C.O Sylvester Mawson, Litt.D., Ph.D. "Maker of Roget's Thesaurus." 1922, Boston. Under the word "passion" (p. 231) are these related words: "pervading spirit," "ruling passion," "fullness of the heart." Good old Roget's; it still works for me.
  
• Murray's English Grammar - Simplified, by Allen Fisk. 1836. "John F. Smith" of Cornish Maine wrote his name three times in the front of the book and added the date May 2, 1846. His penmanship appeared to indicate he was about age 12.
• Elements of Political Economy, by Samuel P. Newman of Bowdoin College. Andover, Mass. 1835. "H.H Smith," "Chase V. Co" owned the book. In pencil sidewise on the page Chase had written, "Yet something in the day belonged to sadness. And it died away."
• The Rhetorical Reader, by Ebenezer Porter, D.D. Andover, Mass. 1839. Signed, "Thomas C. Smith's book, Cornish, Maine." and "John F. Smith, Cornish." These very faint words in pencil: "then be it so and let us find sense, since last these words filled my head."
• Guyot's The Earth and its Inhabitants -- Common-School Geography, New York, 1875, "Helen M. Kimball, 1879," was the signature in the front. On page 62 is the section on "The Empire of Japan." It begins:

  This empire occupies the great mountainous islands, east of the Japan Sea. It has a temperate climate, is quite mild in the south, and is a very fertile country. Japan, like China, is thickly settled, and has a very industrious and brave people. . . Kotei, or Yedo is the capital, which is situated on the island of Nippon. It contained in 1872, 789,000 inhabitants.
  

Thoughts committed to words are at times ephemeral, and at other times more enduring. Perhaps that is why I love books, and fear the potential of stored digital information as too impermanent. But that is a question for another post.


My topical post today at South by Southwest and The Reaction is about politics.

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