…the house I live in…

Let me give you the full quote from the snippet above:

“When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep. And when I am walking alone in the beautiful orchard, if my thoughts are sometimes preoccupied, the rest of the time I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to me.”

(III.13)

I simply love this passage. It is quintessential Montaigne, the sage, the teacher, the man in love with life. The passage comes from the last of the 170 chapters, titled “Of Experience.” If you read Montaigne in sequence you find him evolving from politician and classicist to a man in full blossom, having jettisoned his earlier Stoic pessimism and fatalistic Epicurean melancholy. He turns from learning how to die in the first book (“To Philosphize is to Learn to Die“) to a self-evolved thinker making his own way toward learning how to live. His latter chapters reflect this evolution. There is less name dropping, fewer insertions, more Montiange. Even early in the Essais one senses this was the destination he hoped to find. He is candid in this regard, even in book one:

“I go about cadging from books here and there the sayings that please me, into this one, not to keep them, for I have no storehouses, but to transport them into this one, in which, to tell the truth, they are no more mine than in their original place.”

(I.25)

By the time we get to this last chapter the dross is dispensed with, it’s pure gold.

“To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct. Our great and glorius masterpiece is to live appropriately.”

(III.13)

Thich Nhat Hanh taught the zen proverb, “When you wash the dishes, wash the dishes.” Here Montaigne, the self-styled zen-master, advises when you dance, dance! And when you walk in the woods, be in the woods. And yes, your mind will wander, but bring it back to the woods–and to yourself. The spirit of this passage is one of deep attention, and again, openness born of self-awareness. “I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.”

* * *

I walk in the woods every day. I don’t listen to podcasts or talk on the phone or stream music, though I used to do those things. I have over the seasons removed the things by which I might not fully walk in the woods, that is, the distractions. This morning I crossed paths with a bear twenty yards up the trail. We stopped and stared at one another. I surpressed the urge to shew him away, choosing rather to be fully in the moment. I studied him as he studied me. Two large mammals taking a walk in the woods, one at home, the other attempting to be at home, though that is no longer fully possible. Eventually he went his way and I went mine. Did my presence etch as deep an impression on him as his did on me? I doubt it. Did he ponder his self-awareness, his degree of “fullness?” I assume not, though perhaps in some fashion I cannot imagine. He was the thing itself, the walk, the woods, the state of being, and for that I wished myself more like him and less like me.

* * *

“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks…” declared Thoreau. What I would give to eavesdrop on a walk in the orchard with Montaigne and Thoreau, two beings creeping toward the edge of fulfilled presence. (Emerson read and admired Montaigne, as I’ve noted elsewhere. Whether he introduced his young friend, Henry David, to him is unknown.)

There is much to plumb in this last chapter, so I’ll be picking it up again in my next post. Until then, remember:

“I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.”