Strange Juxtaposition

The first half dozen pages of the November issue of Real Simple were just the kind of thing you’d expect from a glossy magazine—double page ads for makeup, cashmere sweaters, and a sonic foot care system.

It was the next couple of pages that brought me up short.

On the left, beneath the word “Thoughts” there was a striking photograph of an island with a grove of birch trees whose russet leaves covered the ground and a boardwalk inviting the reader to stroll over a patch of slate blue water lined with the afternoon shadows of the trees to the solitude and peace of the island.

Near the bottom of the page there was a quote from Henry David Thoreau: “I  am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite—only a sense of existence.

On the right there was a full page ad dominated by an enormous image of a bottle of facial lotion floating inside a water balloon (presumably to highlight its moisturizing qualities).

It was such a strange juxtaposition. I couldn’t help but wonder what Thoreau would have to say about it.

Maybe contradictions like this are necessary to sell magazines, but how is a reader seeking equanimity supposed to deal with messages that pull in opposite directions?

The ad distracted from the power of his words and ultimately, I think, undermined the intentions of the editors of Real Simple. Were they aware that they were saying one thing with the nature scene and quote and showing something entirely different with the ad?

Maybe contradictions like this are necessary to sell magazines, but how is a reader seeking equanimity supposed to deal with messages that pull in opposite directions?

It was not for another hundred and forty or so pages that the advice on gratitude promised by the headline on the front cover appeared in a four page spread entitled, “Be Here Now.”

It did feature vibrant photographs of things Thoreau would have delighted in discovering on his walks about the countryside—a bird’s egg, dappled, with a slight crack, the headdress of a dried weed.

And I think he would have liked some of the “twelve ways to live in the moment” offered by the experts interviewed for the article.

He would certainly have found a kindred spirit in the poet who assigned her students to study a tree at different times during the day and night and in different weather conditions, because to notice it only after it has started to bud in the springtime is a far less satisfactory experience than examining its branches on a regular basis and suddenly seeing them erupt into new life.

He would relate to the muralist who made a habit of building time to talk to visitors into her workday, for conversations with friends and strangers were important to him—he may have lived alone on Walden pond, but he was no hermit.

He would have agreed with the naturalist who claimed that once you know a place you become part of its rhythm more quickly and that by spending time in nature you begin to see the cycles of birth, death and renewal all around you and accept their inevitability. But he would have found it incomprehensible that she should have to spend time trying to convince people that there were benefits to spending thirty minutes in a park a few times a week without listening to music or talking on a phone.

And I know he would have taken great pleasure in the full page, black-and-white photograph of a conch shell at the close of the article. He probably would have traced its swirl with his fingertip—it was just the kind of kind of treasure he adored, and one that his admirers even today will leave next to the his simple marble headstone in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord where he’s buried.

Unfortunately, immediately following the photograph, the magazine resumed its more worldly focus with an article about matte finish makeup entitled, “Flat Out Gorgeous.”

I immediately closed it and went for a walk. I needed to find something alive, beautiful and exciting in the natural world, something I’d never noticed before. This was how I would practice Thoreau’s approach to seeing the world, pausing every few steps to be grateful for a leaf, a vine, my own breath.