22, October 2010
I love writing the date the way I have above. It makes me feel foreign and sophisticated. I have no idea from where this notion spurs, but I like it nonetheless. Not to mention, it just makes so much more sense to start with the smallest measure of time (the day) and then progress to the greatest measure of time (the year).
Tangential much? It happens. Frequently.
Since this is my first entry, I feel like I ought to write about something substantial (i.e. not about how I like to write the date). This concern stems most likely from too many years studying literature (as if there could be too many), but I want to dig into some of the more weighty self revelations that seem to be bottomless as I have been reading Annie Dillard's, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
At this point, with several deep creases splicing open the spine of the book, and thoughts littering the margins I have not yet reached half way. I think I have approached this writing differently than I do most. The guy at the book store, and my boss's wife both checked the book, gave it an appraising nod and seemed to connect with me in that way that people do when they respect your reading choice and feel like you belong in their mental book club, or something. It's comical how much their little anecdotal praise of my reading selection may or may not have "tainted" my reading experience.
Dillard seems to go on and on about sycamores. She is fascinated by trees, big trees (and insects, apparently). She mentions at one point wanting to pay such close attention to the environment around Tinker Creek that she would be able to deduce the exact moment that Spring had arrived. She writes, " I want to stick a net into time and say 'now,' as men plant flags on ice an snow and say, 'here.' But it occurred to me that I could no more catch the spring by the tip of the tail than I could untie the apparent knot in the snakeskin; there are no edges to grasp. Both are continuous loops." Dillard makes the claim that she is continually trying to chase the present.
It's a lovely concept. This inability to ever exist in the present because it is impossible. Is it because the present in infinitely connected to both the past and the future. Or is it because the present is gone by the time we have realized it. Do I miss the moment by analyzing the moment prior, or worrying about a moment to come? Or, rather, is it the self-reflection, the act of meta-analysis that kills the present, that makes it intangible, unknowable?
Perhaps Dillard describes it better: "Consciousness itself dose not blind living in the present.... self consciousness, however does blind the experience of the present. It is the one instrument that unplugs all the rest. So long as I lose myself in a tree... the tree stays tree. But the second I become aware of myself... the tree vanishes.... it dams, stills, stagnates."
She does this page after page. Some passages are convoluted and lofty, but for the most part, her stream-of-consciousness writing opens my mind and fills it with all sorts of different ideas. Her reflections feel deeper than my own uninspired self revelations. Her words stir in me a kind of initial reflection and then later a much more narcissistic reflection in which I wonder why my thoughts are not more original, why I need her words to think deeper and to look more acutely at the world around me: the trees, the insects.
I believe this may be the reason I have opened up the account and put finger to keyboard. Perhaps I envy her her written reflective moments. I want my own reflective moments. Will mine be so well read? Will the guy at the book store smile when he comes across it and say to the buyer of books, "Good book. I especially like the first chapter about her cat"? Highly unlikely. But, the whiner can dream.
I love writing the date the way I have above. It makes me feel foreign and sophisticated. I have no idea from where this notion spurs, but I like it nonetheless. Not to mention, it just makes so much more sense to start with the smallest measure of time (the day) and then progress to the greatest measure of time (the year).
Tangential much? It happens. Frequently.
Since this is my first entry, I feel like I ought to write about something substantial (i.e. not about how I like to write the date). This concern stems most likely from too many years studying literature (as if there could be too many), but I want to dig into some of the more weighty self revelations that seem to be bottomless as I have been reading Annie Dillard's, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
At this point, with several deep creases splicing open the spine of the book, and thoughts littering the margins I have not yet reached half way. I think I have approached this writing differently than I do most. The guy at the book store, and my boss's wife both checked the book, gave it an appraising nod and seemed to connect with me in that way that people do when they respect your reading choice and feel like you belong in their mental book club, or something. It's comical how much their little anecdotal praise of my reading selection may or may not have "tainted" my reading experience.
Dillard seems to go on and on about sycamores. She is fascinated by trees, big trees (and insects, apparently). She mentions at one point wanting to pay such close attention to the environment around Tinker Creek that she would be able to deduce the exact moment that Spring had arrived. She writes, " I want to stick a net into time and say 'now,' as men plant flags on ice an snow and say, 'here.' But it occurred to me that I could no more catch the spring by the tip of the tail than I could untie the apparent knot in the snakeskin; there are no edges to grasp. Both are continuous loops." Dillard makes the claim that she is continually trying to chase the present.
It's a lovely concept. This inability to ever exist in the present because it is impossible. Is it because the present in infinitely connected to both the past and the future. Or is it because the present is gone by the time we have realized it. Do I miss the moment by analyzing the moment prior, or worrying about a moment to come? Or, rather, is it the self-reflection, the act of meta-analysis that kills the present, that makes it intangible, unknowable?
Perhaps Dillard describes it better: "Consciousness itself dose not blind living in the present.... self consciousness, however does blind the experience of the present. It is the one instrument that unplugs all the rest. So long as I lose myself in a tree... the tree stays tree. But the second I become aware of myself... the tree vanishes.... it dams, stills, stagnates."
She does this page after page. Some passages are convoluted and lofty, but for the most part, her stream-of-consciousness writing opens my mind and fills it with all sorts of different ideas. Her reflections feel deeper than my own uninspired self revelations. Her words stir in me a kind of initial reflection and then later a much more narcissistic reflection in which I wonder why my thoughts are not more original, why I need her words to think deeper and to look more acutely at the world around me: the trees, the insects.
I believe this may be the reason I have opened up the account and put finger to keyboard. Perhaps I envy her her written reflective moments. I want my own reflective moments. Will mine be so well read? Will the guy at the book store smile when he comes across it and say to the buyer of books, "Good book. I especially like the first chapter about her cat"? Highly unlikely. But, the whiner can dream.
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