Tuesday, February 20, 2024
In bed at 10 but still awake at 11:30. Napping? Shoulder pain? Up at 5:51. 29°, high of 45°, sunny morning, partly cloudy afternoon. Dense Fog Advisory until 9 a.m. Wind S at 6 mph, 1-12/22. Sunrise at 6:42 at 104°, sunset at 5:28 at 256°, 10+46. Solar noon at 12:05, alt. 36°. Since solstice, the solar noon is 6 minutes later, its altitude 12° higher, and sunrise 18° further north.
Treadmill; pain. On awakening, the normal pains, but wrist pain is better than in the past, as is shoulder pain although the shoulder is the bigger problem of the two. I got on the treadmill yesterday for a slow, short walk, 20:01 & 0.36 watching the opening of the ICJ hearing for an advisory opinion re: Israel's 56-year occupation of Palestinian territories. Today, pain keeps me off the treadmill. 0:00
“Experiencing the present purely is being emptied and hollow; you catch the grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.”
“The death of self of which the great writers speak is no violent act. It is merely the joining of the great rock heart of the earth in its roll. It is merely the slow cessation of the will's spirits and the intellect's chatter: it is waiting like a hollow bell with a stilled tongue. Fuge, tace, quiesce. The waiting itself is the thing.”
“The sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: ‘This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is."
“We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.”
" It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator--our very self-consciousness--is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends.”
“Self-consciousness, however, does hinder the experience of the present. It is the one instrument that unplugs all the rest. So long as I lose myself in a tree, say, I can scent its leafy breath or estimate its board feet of lumber, I can draw its fruits or boil tea on its branches, and the tree stays tree. But the second I become aware of myself at any of these activities -- looking over my own shoulder, as it were -- the tree vanishes, uprooted from the spot and flung out of sight as if it had never grown. And time, which had flowed down into the tree bearing new revelations like floating leaves at ever moment, ceases. It dams, stills, stagnates.
“I am sitting under a sycamore by Tinker Creek. I am really here, alive on the intricate earth under trees. But under me, directly under the weight of my body on the grass, are other creatures, just as real, for whom also this moment, this tree, is “it”… in the top inch of soil, biologists found “an average of 1,356 living creatures in each square foot… I might as well include these creatures in this moment, as best as I can. My ignoring them won’t strip them of their reality, and admitting them, one by one, into my consciousness might heighten mine, might add their dim awareness to my human consciousness, such as it is, and set up a buzz, a vibration…"
“What I aim to do is not so much learn the names of the shreds of creation that flourish in this valley, but to keep myself open to their meanings, which is to try to impress myself at all times with the fullest possible force of their very reality. I want to have things as multiply and intricately as possible present and visible in my mind. Then I might be able to sit on the hill by the burnt books where the starlings fly over, and see not only the starlings, the grass field, the quarried rock, the viney woods, Hollins pond, and the mountains beyond, but also, and simultaneously, feathers’ barbs, springtails in the soil, crystal in rock, chloroplasts streaming, rotifers pulsing, and the shape of the air in the pines. And, if I try to keep my eye on quantum physics, if I try to keep up with astronomy and cosmology, and really believe it all, I might ultimately be able to make out the landscape of the universe. Why not?”
She has a keen sense of time, space, and motion. I crudely keep track of the length of daylight, the sun's daily altitude and where it rises and sets on the horizon. She writes:
Spring is seeping north, towards me and away from me, at sixteen miles a day. Along estuary banks of tidal rivers all over the world, snails in black clusters like currants are gliding up and down the stems of reed and sedge, migrating every moment with the dip and swing of tides. Behind me, Tinker Mountain is eroding one thousandth of an inch a year. The sharks I saw are roving up and down the coast. If the sharks cease roving, if they still their twist and rest for a moment, they die. They need new water pushed into their gills; they need dance. Somewhere east of me, on another continent, it is sunset, and starlings in breathtaking bands are winding high in the sky to their evening roost. The mantis egg cases are tied to the mock-orange hedge; within each case, within each egg, cells elongate, narrow, and split; cells bubble and curve inward, align, harden or hollow or stretch. And where are you now?”
I have to wonder whether she is not deeply influenced by Buddhism and perhaps Zen, with her focus on living in the present moment, consciousness, awareness, and unencumbered sense impressions, all of which bespeak mindfulness and meditation. Wikipedia tells us that she attended a Presbyterian church during her childhood, was "promiscuous" about religions in college, converted to Catholicism for a while as an adult, and lists her religion as "none." I sent a copy of Pilgrim to Steve a few years ago because of his interest in Nature. He said he found it hard to get into which didn't surprise me. At times it is hard to know just what she is talking about when the poet in her (or the mystic?) takes over her writing. I very much enjoyed Pilgrim years ago and, since thinking of her again in this journal, I ought to read some of her voluminous other writings.
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