We have a view!

"To be great is to be misunderstood." I don't feel misunderstood at the moment, actually, nor do I feel great, but I do feel pretty good. Firstly, I've been reading Emerson. I hadn't really before and I don't really know why, because I really like his view of the world. It is similar to mine, in that I believe that everything is connected, "beauty is its own excuse for being," the search for truth is the greatest search of all, and the individual is important, not only for its own sake, but because it is a part of a perfect whole. And yes, over all I think the Universe is as it should be. Certainly, we can do a lot in our own lives to make them and the world around us better, but I really do believe the system works, if that makes sense. For example, I like gravity. I think gravity's a good idea. And I like life. I think living is a good idea, too. I think squirrels are just as important as mountains and God encompases all things, positive and negative, great and small, good and bad, such as they exist. I'll probably talk about all this again, because I spend a lot of time, well, thinking. What can I say? I'm a writer. It's not as if I have a life.
Because of whatever strange involuntary process by which my brain functions, whenever I hear the name Emerson, I think first of the word "transcendental," which immediately causes me to start humming "All My Exes Live in Texas." Verily, the mind is a strange place...Since I've been reading some of Emerson's writings, however, I have been struck by a thought which must be extremely obvious to everyone else in the world--that Emerson is undoubtedly the direct inspiration for the wonderful characters of Mr. Emerson and Mr. George Emerson in E.M. Forster's magnificent A Room With a View. I love Forster too, though I've only read three of his novels (though I expect they're his three best. The other two are Howards End and A Passage to India. The former totally changed my way of thinking about the world and the latter I just loved, but they and their author deserve a post of their own). And all this makes me think of George in the fabulous 1985 movie version climbing in a shrubby tree "yelling his creed." And that always makes me smile.
Anyway, I'm especially at peace with myself this evening because of my own writing. First, I've been working for two days on my latest project (which has very rudely superseded the other two novels I've been working on--ideas do that to me sometimes, but this one I'm determined to finish rapidly) and already have more than 5,000 words. So, I should have 50,000 words in only eighteen more days, right? Ha! I wrote two chapters yesterday and only one today, and I'm not going to be able to get any work done for a few days next week, plus I'm fairly certain this project will be much more than 50,000 words--after all, The Splitting of the World is 90-some thousand and this project is looking like a trilogy...Sigh. Oh well. But, as I often do when I've just started a project, I think this one has real potential. : )
The other thing was a poem. I've been working on it for a contest since the first week of April and have two very different versions of it now. I think I've decided on the version I like better and have perfected it now, though I think I'll wait to send it in until tomorrow. I will definitely post the version I didn't choose and discuss it in more detail when the contest is finished. So, that's something to look forward to...
Meanwhile, going by the dictionary definition alone, Transcendental Idealism sounds related to Monism...Here are some more quotes from Emerson for you: "character is higher than intellect," "the office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances" (I think Cala would like this Emerson guy...), "We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more," and my favorite "the soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose."
And also the wonderful new verb: "to Shakspearize" (he spelled it that way). I do that sometimes...
-Susie