Tag: Annie Dillard

Shadows Moving with the Sun

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myohmy
Be comforted; the world is very old,
  And generations pass, as they have passed,
  A troop of shadows moving with the sun;
Thousands of times has the old tale been told;
  The world belongs to those who come the last,
  They will find hope and strength as we have done.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “A Shadow”

sunriseshadow

The shadow’s the thing. 
If I no longer see shadows as “dark marks,”
as do the newly sighted,
then I see them as making some sort of sense of the light.
They give the light distance;
they put it in its place.
They inform my eyes of my location here, here O Israel
,here in the world’s flawed sculpture,
here in the flickering shade of the nothingness
between me and the light.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

shadow closeup

A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash to the ground.
~Victor Hugo from Les Miserables

The Chopping Block

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block.
~Annie Dillard from The Writing Life

Almost a year ago, I decided to aim for the block daily on this website of reflections, as if words were wood and pictures were kindling.  I have ended up with a quite a pile of almost 1000 blog posts strewn about my feet due to my random chopping, having been drenched in sweat at times, and garnered my share of splinters.

The reason for writing daily came after I learned that a well-respected publisher’s interest in printing a collection of my work had fizzled with dwindling resources for creating hard copy books, particularly for new authors.  There needs to be assurance of selling at least 3000 copies of a book for a publisher to break even.

I could offer no such assurance.  This blog, on a “good” day, gets 120 visitors.

So I’ve started storing up the wood of words and pictures, chopping away every day in case I’ll need this storehouse of fuel in the future.  It is not that the world needs another blog post but that I need to keep aiming, keep chopping and keep my eye on the block, cutting through and past the wood.  This is something I do because I feel better when I do it, like the redemption of aching muscles after a work out.

My ax needs constant sharpening and I keep my aim focused.   The days are shortening.

Sun and Wind

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grasssunThere is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
~Annie Dillard

I tend to think of the wind, not the sun, having all the weather muscle, especially in the midst of a brisk northeaster blow in the dead of winter, far outperforming the meager and anemic sunlight.  That memory of northeast blizzard muscle is still fresh in the first half of July.

But yesterday, on a warm summer day,  it was both sun and wind competing with their mustered energy.  With all the house windows kept wide open to keep things cool there were frequent door-slamming, blinds-beating, leaf-loosening, windchime-clanging, hay-drying gusts of up to 30 mph.  Muscle was all around and through us.

There was enough sun to create a shadow tree blending like a holograph projected onto the woods.  There was enough wind to shake the grasses and thistles and scatter their seed.  There was enough sun to dip the evening with orange smoothie and enough wind to clear the haze from the air.

For now there is plenty of energy to spare: spirit-filled muscle to pick me up, bend me over, warm my heart, all bottled and ready to release on that inevitable wintry day that will come,  sooner than I want.

shadow of the lone fir cast upon the woods at sunset
shadow of the lone fir cast upon the woods
the sun dipping behind a fence post
the sun dipping behind a fence post

Hope of Beauty Laid Bare

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999246_10151696763121119_1688897323_nWhy are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?  Why are we reading, if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking.
~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop’

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As If Dying

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sunrise529Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case.
~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”

I began to write after September 11, 2001 because that day it became obvious to me I was dying, albeit more slowly than the thousands who vanished in fire and ash, their voices obliterated with their bodies.   So, nearly each day since, while I still have voice and a new dawn to greet, I speak through my fingers to others dying around me.

We are, after all, terminal patients, some of us more prepared than others to move on, as if our readiness had anything to do with the timing.

Each day I get a little closer, but I write in order to feel a little more ready.  Each day I want to detach just a little bit, leaving a trace of my voice behind.  Eventually, through unmerited grace, so much of me will be left on the page there won’t be anything or anyone left to do the typing.
There is no time or word to waste.

At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your fists, your back, your brain, and then – and only then -it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way. It is a parcel bound in ribbons and bows; it has two white wings. It flies directly at you; you can read your name on it. If it were a baseball, you would hit it out of the park. It is that one pitch in a thousand you see in slow motion; its wings beat slowly as a hawk’s.

One line of a poem, the poet said – only one line, but thank God for that one line – drops from the ceiling. Thornton Wilder cited this unnamed writer of sonnets: one line of a sonnet falls from the ceiling, and you tap in the others around it with a jeweler’s hammer. Nobody whispers it in your ear. It is like something you memorized once and forgot. Now it comes back and rips away your breath. You find and finger a phrase at a time; you lay it down as if with tongs, restraining your strength, and wait suspended and fierce until the next one finds you: yes, this; and yes, praise be, then this.
~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”

 

Waiting to be Filled

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

My God, I look at the creek. It is the answer to Merton’s prayer, “Give us time!”  It never stops…. You don’t run down the present, pursue it with baited hooks and nets.  You wait for it, empty-handed, and you are filled.  You’ll have fish left over.  The creek is the one great giver.  It is, by definition, Christmas, the incarnation.  This old rock planet gets the present for a present on its birthday every day. 
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Good things as well as bad, you know are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?
~C.S. Lewis- Mere Christianity

…the room was filled by a presence that in a strange way was both about me and within me like a light or warmth. I was overwhelming possessed by someone who was not myself.  And yet, I felt more myself than ever before.  I was filled with intense happiness and almost unbearable joy as I had never known before or never known since.  And overall, there was a deep sense of peace and security and certainty.
~C. S. Lewis

At Least I Can Twirl

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

All at once I saw what looked like a Martian spaceship whirling towards me in the air. It flashed borrowed light like a propeller. Its forward motion greatly outran its fall. As I watched, transfixed, it rose, just before it would have touched a thistle, and hovered pirouetting in one spot, then twirled on and finally came to rest. I found it in the grass; it was a maple key, a single winged seed from a pair. Hullo. I threw it into the wind and it flew off again, bristling with animate purpose, not like a thing dropped or windblown, pushed by the witless winds of convection currents hauling round the world’s rondure where they must, but like a creature muscled and vigorous, or a creature spread thin to that other wind, the wind of the spirit which bloweth where it listeth, lighting, and raising up, and easing down. O maple key, I thought, I must confess I thought, o welcome, cheers.

And the bell under my ribs rang a true note, a flourish as of blended horns, clarion, sweet, and making a long dim sense I will try at length to explain. Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. That breath never ceases to kindle, exuberant, abandoned; frayed splinters spatter in every direction and burgeon into flame. And now when I sway to a fitful wind, alone and listing, I will think, maple key. When I see a photograph of earth from space, the planet so startlingly painterly and hung, I will think, maple key. When I shake your hand or meet your eyes I will think, two maple keys. If I am a maple key falling, at least I can twirl.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Earth 2

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Watching the Mountain Do Its Tricks

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This is it, I think, this is it, right now, the present, this empty gas station, here, this western wind, this tang of coffee on the tongue, and I am patting the puppy, I am watching the mountain. And the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain, I cease to see the mountain or feel the puppy. I am opaque, so much black asphalt. But at the same second, the second I know I’ve lost it, I also realize that the puppy is still squirming on his back under my hand. Nothing has changed for him. He draws his legs down to stretch the skin taut so he feels every fingertip’s stroke along his furred and arching side, his flank, his flung-back throat.

I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feeling save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator — our very self-consciousness — is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends. I get in the car and drive home.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

Rough Edges Smoothed

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

What does it feel like to be alive?
Living, you stand under a waterfall…
It is time pounding at you, time.
Knowing you are alive is watching on every side
your generation’s short time falling away
as fast as rivers drop through air,
and feeling it hit.
~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood

I had hopes for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world’s surface, and exit through it.
~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood

Mothering is like standing under a waterfall, barely able to breathe, barraged by the firehose of birthing and raising children, so much so fast.  Nothing rough remains after child rearing — all becomes soft and cushiony, designed to gather in, hold tight, and then reluctantly and necessarily, let go.

I’m well aware, even after my children have grown and flown, my rough edges still surface, like Godzilla from the primordial swamp, unbidden and unwarranted.  I want the sharpness gone, sanded down by the waterfalls of life, and smoothed to a fine finish.

My children continue to polish me, now from afar.  Time pounds away at me.  I can feel it hitting, every drop a blessing.

Inherited Specks

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Skin was earth; it was soil. I could see, even on my own skin, the joined trapezoids of dust specks God had wetted and stuck with his spit the morning he made Adam from dirt. Now, all these generations later, we people could still see on our skin the inherited prints of the dust specks of Eden.
~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood

A goodly portion of every clinic day is spent looking at my patients’ skin.  Most of the time, it is a quick assessment of color, moisture and texture before I go on to concentrate on the chief complaint that brought the patient in.  However, skin concerns frequently are the chief complaint — perhaps as straight forward as an abrasion or laceration, or a puzzling bump, an oozing sore, a total body itch, or an ominous pigmented lesion.

I feel like Sherlock Holmes when I focus on a patient’s outer covering in magnified detail.  I assume the identity of detective, inspector and archeologist all at once, trying to discern what is taking place on or beneath a piece of dermatologic geography.

No matter what the diagnosis or the treatment plan, I’m continually awestruck by the topography of skin.  This supple landscape is made up of trapezoidal specks connected one to another, just like the soil upon which I tread.   Skin cells are in a state of constant renewal, the dead and discarded falling off to rejoin the dust from which it came.

This elaborate matrix of collagen and keratin is the foundation for our scaffolding and our shroud.

His spit provides the superglue: the rivets, the bolts and the nails that bind us together for a lifetime.

We are created to be far more than a mere pile of random dust specks.