A Week on the River -- Thoreau

"He has almost become the sun's confidant. Having lived long enough, he has seen through that thin disguise—why bother with hats or clothes anymore?"

After a week of contemplation, I’ve decided to end it with this final stroke.

"He doesn’t fish for leisure or livelihood, but as a solemn ritual and escape, much like the elderly reciting the Bible."

"I’ve seen the Fates gift him golden bass, yet such luck pales against the years he’s weathered."

Bound by time’s calipers, people forge visible goals to flee inferiority and anxiety. Confucius aimed for rites, Confucianism for Confucius, Buddhism for enlightenment, Kant for humanity. Goals don’t need people—people need goals. This is the sole bulwark against nihilism.

Life is the gradual refinement of self. The devout live for divine proverbs, scholars for perfect knowledge, artists for fleeting brilliance. Life’s essence is reverence for the pursued, whether real or imagined. Reverence wells from the soul’s depths—thus, it is exclusive and singular.

Reverence for reverence itself is also reverence. Reverence for life.

Life’s core is choice and selection. It begins and ends in reverence.

"But those bones won’t rattle. Their decay brews new forms, serving new masters—all of the Native’s legacy will fuel the White man’s vigor."

Dante: "Midway through life, I lost truth in deep slumber." A self-aware elegy, humanity’s confession. Life is but excuses for sloth and dread. Strauss: "We retail reason, wholesale madness. We know too much of trivia, too little of truth." Like the godforsaken blind to heaven. Without faith, one drowns.

Native, White, Black, Yellow—all are bound by their era. Only the era-less become philosophers. Generations spiral into complexity, buried by life. History digs deeper; man must extract himself. Choices must be made.

Man surpasses beasts, yet stratifies. Complexity consumes all.

Until the intricate world buries every madman. Wars, chaos—human history is a tome too convoluted to learn. This age elevates man’s chain above God’s. Man is the measure, yet power distorts into madness.

What’s past is prologue.

Thought leaps like Zhuangzi’s river. *A Week on the River* is a solitary book—some read history’s weight, others travel’s lightness, some wander like me.

Interpret freely. Live your own life.