{ 2008.06.17 }
If you are riding on a train or a bus or similar conveyance, it is best to face backwards, so that you can watch the passing landscape and all its myriad details recede behind you. It is a completely different experience from facing forwards, which gives the impression that everything is coming at you, when in fact the situation is just the reverse. To watch the world fall away, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, reminds you how transient the entire situation really is.
Also, more from Walden, “Where I Lived and What I Lived For”:
Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air — to a higher life than we fell asleep from … We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.