In which I dearly wish to be somewhere else

"Who can tell how scenes of peace and quietude sink into the minds of pain-worn dwellers in close and noisy places, and carry their own freshness, deep into their jaded hearts! Men who have lived in crowded, pent-up streets, through lives of toil: and never wished for change; men, to whom custom has indeed been second nature, and who have come almost to love each brick and stone that formed the narrow boundaries of their daily walks: even they, with the hand of death upon them, have been known to yearn at last for one short glimpse of Nature's face; and carried, far from the scenes of their old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pass at once into a new state of being, and crawling forth, from day to day, to some green sunny spot, they have had such memories wakened up within them by the mere sight of sky, and hill, and plain, and glistening water, that the foretaste of heaven itself has soothed their quick decline, and they have sunk into their tombs as peacefully as the sun: whose setting they watched from their lonely chamber-window but a few hours before: faded from their dim and feeble sight! The memories which peaceful country scenes call up, are not of this world, nor of its thoughts and hopes. Their gentle influence may teach us how to weave fresh garlands for the graves of those we loved: may purify our thoughts, and bear down before it old emnity and hatred; but beneat all this, there lingers, in the least reflective mind, a vague and half-formed conciousness of having held such feelings long before, in some remote and distant time; which calls upon solemn thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down pride and wordliness beneath it"
-Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

I can think of few things more enjoyable than reading Dickens while listening to Vaughn Williams. But oh to read Dickens in the company of the rustling grass, with a friendly oak or amber looking over your shoulder! To listen to the melody of the wind as it tumbles over hillsides and rivers, rather than the sound that struggles out of my computer speakers! To look up from my book and see not the drab, off-white of my ceiling, but the deep and clear blue of a country sky!

And on a (somewhat) unrelated note . . .

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. It also makes one go a bit funny in the head.