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Under the world’s conifers—under the creek side cedar behind where I sit—a mantle of fungus wraps the soil in a weft, shooting out blind thread after frail thread of palest dissolved white. From root tip to root tip, root hair to root hair, these filaments loop and wind; the thought of them always reminds me of Rimbaud’s “I have stretched cords from steeple to steeple, garlands from window to window, chains of gold from star to star, and I dance.”
King David leaped and danced naked before the ark of the Lord in a barren desert. Here the very looped soil is an intricate throng of praise. Make connections; let rip; and dance where you can.
—Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, excerpt
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And we the people are so vulnerable. Our bodies are shot with mortality. Our legs are fear and our arms are time. These chill humors seep through our capillaries, weighting each cell with an icy dab of nonbeing, and that dab grows and swells and sucks the cell dry. That is why physical courage is so important - it fills, as it were, the holes - and why it is so invigorating. The least brave act, chance taken and passage won, makes you feel loud as a child.
–Annie Dillard
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Say
you have seen something. You have seen an ordinary bit of what is real,
the infinite fabric of time that eternity shoots through, and time's
soft-skinned people working and dying under slowly shifting stars. Then
what?
–Annie Dillard
