A Journal Entry for July 4th Week

A view of the Thimble Island and The Sound from Indian Neck in Branford, Connecticut

“Went out alone to take dinner at Momauguin Beach, the once pleasing beach resort [in Connecticut].... The Sound: first the blues and grays of nacre; then the cirrus pink on blue; then the dark, and then the lighthouses of the coast ... We human beings are in a universe that does not know we are here.  The sunset deployed tonight was not there for my benefit and had nothing to say to me beyond what I shall read into it .... There are, however, two things to inspire our awe ... They are that force which produced the eye, and the intellect, and which is now producing some new faculty; and there is the fact that all the complexity of the world has proceeded by law, from unity ... What is awe-inspiring is merely that it happened at all. “

Thornton Wilder’s journal entry dated July 6 ,1950