Dillard

Oh, Annie Dillard! How I do love you so.

On the first day of school I read a passage from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. In this passage Dillard explains how she “used to hide a precious penny” in hope someone would find it and “receive, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe.” She goes on to compare this free gift with watching “a muskrat kit paddling from her den.” Dillard wonders if this sight is only worth a “chip of copper.” She concludes, “It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny, but 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 panted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.” I then tell a story about seeing a Great Blue Heron dive off a pier to catch a fish. That event happened after a long disappointing day. The heron turned my day around. Even before I read about "seeing" I knew I was experiencing it that day.

This reading for Natural History was timely for me. After spending two months learning, we are now thrown into teaching. I must admit I wasn't ready to let the book work go. After reading Dillard's words about the weasel, I had a change of heart (I hope it lasts). "I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot part. Seize it and let it seize you..." Let the seizing begin.