If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. 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 profusions 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.
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is a possibility of beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, of it comes to that, choir the proper praise.
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then since the world is in fact planted with pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous.Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery . . .Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
My deepest apologies for accidentally deleting the wonderful comments on this post that I received this morning from John Pendrey, The Solitary Walker, Solitary-Cyclist, Laura a Pretty-Pix, and the Weaver of Grass. I was attempting to correct a typo, and the update unexpectedly erased both the comments and my replies. Here, as I recall, is what I said in my replies:;
ReplyDeleteJohn — Thanks for stopping by. Delighted to found something here that resonates with you.
Robert — Thanks for your insightful comments on Annie Dillard's writing. In an effort to escape the toxic rhetoric of this political season, I began re-reading sections of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek this weekend, and I was so moved by some of the previously underlined passages that I wanted to share them on the blog. Dillard has few peers when it comes to her ability, as you say, "to blend the magical with the rigorously observational," and when she does that, I always get a taste of the mystical.
Dominic — Delighted that you enjoyed these images. I, too, have an affinity for the first one; it just seems to capture the fact that all of nature is interwoven and interdependent.
Laura — Many thanks. Glad these words and images spoke to you.
Pat — Thanks for your comment. Glad you like this posting.
Annie Dillard quotes go so well with your photography. George. I believe I've read all of Dillard's books, but this post has me wanting to go back and reread Pilgrim. The hawk photo is quite wonderful. The detail in all your photos is amazing.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Barb. I was rereading parts of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek this weekend, and each time I came across a passage underlined in my original reading of the book, I thought of photos that tend to capture some of the things that underpin her nature writing. I don't think I will ever stop reading Dillard. To quote my friend, The Solitary Walker (whose comment was accidentally deleted with others this morning), Dillard has an amazing capacity "to blend the magical with the rigorously observational." This second quality — being rigorously observational — has taught me to see better, and I think it's helped me through the years with my photography.
Delete"the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation." I don't think I agree with her. Extravagance I associate with excess. In the universe there seems to be neither too little nor too much of anything. Complexity seems to arise from simplicity. A bit like Bach. Bach is not extravagant.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Dominic. I suppose extravagance, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I'm in no position to disagree with you.
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