Intro & Preface & Contents
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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
I tend to confuse the stories of Sallie Tisdale (The Sutra of Maggots and Blowflies -- links here) and Annie Dillard. When I recall a ghastly tale about insects it’s hard to remember which of the two infected me with it. Dillard’s parable of the Polyphemus moth is unforgettable (there’s a version in Pilgrim... and a slightly different version in An American Childhood which is perhaps more effective for standing more alone) and I can thank Dillard for the statistic that 10% of all insects are parasitic, but otherwise they tell a similar tale of natural abjection.
Some quotes from Pilgrim...
I think of this house clamped to the side of Tinker Creek as an anchor-hold. It holds me at anchor to the rock bottom of the creek itself and it keeps me steadied in the current, as a sea anchor does, facing the stream of light pouring down. It’s a good place to live, there’s a lot to think about... Theirs [the creeks] is the mystery of the continuous creation and all that providence implies: the uncertainty of vision, the horror of the fixed, the dissolution of the present, the intricacy of beauty, the pressure of fecundity, the elusiveness of the free, and the flawed nature of perfection...
After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusion on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes, but everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.
And speaking of fire, we do love a good blaze. We can’t take our eyes off a wreck or disaster. I’ve joked we “choose” to dump the crazy and defective on the streets where we can see them struggle -- but what if that’s true? What if “Care In the Community” is like bear baiting and dog fights? The Saw movie franchise and the Human Centipede suggests that we crave this and BDSM suggests that just watching isn’t enough -- hello Foucault.
If we build a particularly big “Man” on the Playa it’s because we want to see it burn. Is it the same for cities? Did the Japanese build the magnificent Yamato battleship and then sail it on a pointless mission of doom at least in part for the spectacle?
An infant who has just learned to hold his head up has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment.
I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year’s planting.
When the leaves fall the striptease is over; things stand mute and revealed... All that summer conceals, winter reveals.
I’m getting used to this planet and to the curious human culture which is as cheerfully enthusiastic as it is cheerfully cruel.
The “worlds” created by art also take you away from the “actual” moment. To the extent you are captivated by music, a painting, a book, a film, you are oblivious to the world that is actually around you. The “moment” is like a cat trying to get your attention while you are busy doing something else.
I do it [study pond water] as a moral exercise... a constant reminder of the facts of creation that I would just as soon forget... These are real creatures with real organs, leading real lives, one by one. I can’t pretend they’re not there.
...it occurs to me more and more that everything I have seen is wholly gratuitous.
...the universe was beginning to look more like a great thought than a great machine... But the question of who is thinking the thought is more fruitful than the question of who made the machine...
Just think: in all the clean beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot; our planet alone has death. I have to acknowledge that the sea is a cup of death and the land a stained altar stone.
Are we dealing in life, or in death?
Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me.
Either this world, my mother, is a monster, or I myself am a freak... We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet... We are moral creatures, then, in an amoral world. The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die -- does not care if it grinds itself to a halt.
I’ve already used the quote above (in Autumn XIII. Stoics part 2) but I need to review it with Sartre and Foucault in mind. The task of being a moral creature in an amoral world was Sartre’s life work. While Sartre and Foucault often marched together at political rallies, I think Foucault was rather more comfortable with an amoral world. In fact I have the feeling he was at home there.
...if you want to live you have to die...
Creation itself was the fall, a burst into the thorny beauty of the real...
The creator is no puritan. A creature need not work for a living; creatures may simply steal and suck and be blessed for all that with a share -- an enormous share -- of the sunlight and air.
Another year has twined away, unrolled and dropped across nowhere like a flung banner painted in gibberish.
And one day it occurs to you that you must not need life... The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest... There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see.
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