Dear Annie Dillard: (pt. 2)

My promise to Annie Dillard has been kept. I finished her book "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" this morning. What a brilliantly creative and perceptive woman.

I've now finished two books this year, and it's still January. I'm going to keep two tangible piles of books this year: the ones I've read and the ones on my list to be read. Hopefully it'll help keep me on task. Next on the list is "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell. I hope to be moving through books quickly enough this year that I can be a little less careful, and a little more adventurous in my reading selections.

In "Blue Like Jazz," the first book I read this year, Donald Miller goes into detail about the effects of spending too much time by himself. Amongst these effects, he talks about reading a lot and beginning to have "conversations" with people like Emily Dickinson who he'd been reading a lot of at the time. He even talks about visiting the house in Amherst, MA, where she lived in the 19th century and confesses to a romantic (in a nice, "kiss-of-the-hand" way...not a gross, "gratuitous-'love'-scene" way) relationship he'd love to have with her were she still alive.

I expressed briefly that Miller's book spoke to me in a way that met me where I am in life right now. I think he and I are rather kindred spirits and I hope to meet him sometime off the radar, off the record so we can have a candid conversation between two pilgrims on the same voyage. That being said, I think I sort of get where he's coming from.

Miller's and Dillard's books are both full of personal opinions and experiences. After finishing both books, I found myself with an overwhelming desire to meet persons behind the personas. It probably has a lot to do with that particular style of writing. For example, after reading Lord of the Rings, I wanted to meet Gandalf and Aragorn, not necessarily Tolkien...although that'd be cool too. I think it also has to do with the fact that I'm simply a poor listener in person. Books, however, offer a one-way communication in which I have no option but to listen and ponder what the other person says. I have no option to retort, and so I keep my comments to myself...hopefully something I learn to do more in person.

I wouldn't feign to even begin to understand Miller or Dillard, but I would most certainly REALLY relish buying them a cup of coffee and just talking with them for a brief spell. I would feel silly about this if it were for some sort of personal gain, but I'd really just like the pleasure of walking a few moments of this life together with them and no more. People were created to need and enjoy each other...it doesn't seem unreasonable.

Anyway, what I needn't forget is that most of the people who were aware of Dickinson in her lifetime found her reclusive, odd, and didn't know she even wrote. It wasn't till she died that she was discovered and published properly. Tragic. Whereas I'd love to meet both Donald Miller and Annie Dillard, I won't be found wanting should opportunity never present itself. I'm surrounded by people everyday, and I'm learning that they're all very interesting. As I get better about focusing outward rather than inward, I think there are a lot of unexpected adventures to be had. It's high time for me to start "seeing" the people around me and the unique beauty that's within every one of them. By not doing so, I do both them and myself a terrible disservice.

Dear Annie Dillard:

I kept my promise and finished your book and enjoyed it thoroughly. If you're ever in the Nashville area, look up ol' Handygraham. It would be my distinct privilege and honor to buy you a cup of coffee, or your beverage of choice. Thanks for being you.

sincerely,

graham

Dear Donald Miller:

I shan't re-invent the wheel, but the same goes for you, my friend. A cup of coffee is hardly a fair trade-off for how much I enjoyed your book, but hey, it is what it is.

just as sincerely,

graham

A moment of enlightenment???

I think I may have had a brief moment of enlightenment this morning...a tiny glimpse of Heaven, maybe?

I've been under a pretty good deal of stress lately. The components are somewhat typical to those of us Generation X/Y or whatever we are, and are not really relevant or worth going into. Suffice it to say that sometimes the road is hard, and sometimes it's easy...right now, I'm on one of the hard stretches...perhaps one of the hardest stretches I've seen.

In the Annie Dillard book I've been reading, she described a particular moment of existence. Obviously, we constantly exist, but we come across a few occasions in this life where we forget ourselves and momentarily become one in symbiosis with the planet. Dillard's "moment" came unexpectedly at a gas station in backwoods Virginia. It involved patting a random puppy and getting lost in the beauty/wonder of (I think it was...) the Appalachians. My experience had some slightly different variables. 8)

Ok, I don't think my experience can be compared to Dillard's, exactly. If you ever read about it, I think you'll see what I mean. I think it is, however along the same lines. My moment came to me in the midst of some pretty high stress, and for just a moment, I was in a place where everything felt like it would be all right.

Here's what happened:

My nephew had a basketball game at nine in south Brentwood. Following my typical rules of "Morning Math," I naturally left at a minute when I'd have no chance in the world of actually getting there by nine. Of course, I forgot that I-440 was closed for construction, as it always is on weekends these days, so I had to go out of the way to get to the I-65 only to realize that my normal cut-through was also disabled due to the flea market at the TN State Fairgrounds. It's now nine, I'm still 15 minutes out, this short-term stress on top of my long-term stress is making my blood pressure skyrocket. Of course, I was so busy stressing that I got off at the wrong exit. AHHHHH!!! I HATE being late to things that children are involved in. Kids are so impressionable, and they need us adults to BE THERE when we say we will.

Anyway, I met only a negligible amount of resistance on the rest of the drive and began to calm down a bit. Crap - I was the "hustle & bustle" I mentioned last Saturday. Deep Breath. Exhale. I came back to my senses a bit. The sun was working its way up in the sky and looked warm and alive. I was wearing my favorite, hella-comfy East Nasty shirt and my brand-new, awesome sunglasses that impulse bought with a little Christmas money and are completely dope. I was sipping a cup of good coffee and driving up to the top of the bridge right next to Ravenwood High School, which provides a simply stellar view of the surrounding land. Are you ready for this? [Crescendo...] I was listening to "Jump" by Van Halen. [Crux] These elements melted together into one, and I felt the world around me singing along. My sails filled with the wind, and I was lifted out of my stress as I floated weightless in the arms of the moment. [Decrescendo] (Sigh of contentment)

I got to the game just in time to see Liam catch a long pass from back court and score his first two points EVER! It was beautiful...now he was on top of the world...getting back on defense with an uncontrollable sense of invincibility and trying so hard to play it cool...but his elation was undeniable and infectious.

Ahhh...well, like all fleeting glimpses of Heaven, the game ended and real life resumed, but at least I had those few moments, and they were wonderful.

Cookies and Leaf piles.

I'm eating "Kroger Value: Iced Oatmeal Cookies" right now. I just finished my lunch and have developed the habit of needing a sweet fix after meals. I think there are about 40 Oatmeal Cookies in this package. I also think I might just eat half of them right now. I mean why not? I have been blessed with an incredible metabolism that's never really allowed me to gain weight. On a slow week, my cumulative running mileage is higher than what the majority of Americans will run this whole year. These things are dang good. Oatmeal's good for you, right? Not to mention, I need an excuse to drink the milk in my fridge before it goes bad.

Yeah, I thought so.

The Distillery of Leaves:

On the next street over and about a block down, live some good friends of mine. They are awesome and I'm thankful for them, but I'm annoyed with them right now. They raked a big pile of leaves a month or so ago and left them in the front yard. I'm not annoyed because the leaves look bad...they don't...I'm annoyed because they are so wonderfully inviting that I lose myself every time I drive by them.

Leaf piles are magnificent things:

When I was in middle school (i.e. before I was driving [legally, that is]), I had a purple freestyle Mongoose bike with all the cool pegs and no brakes. I stopped the bike by putting my feet on the front wheel pegs and pinching the tire with my toes, and subsequently went through shoes rather quickly. In Palmyra, PA, all you have to do with your leaves is rake them out to the curb and the big vacuum truck comes to suck them up. Until the vacuum comes, however, they are SO fun to ride your bike through. My favorite thing to do was to ride into the piles and fishtail the back end of my bike so it was sliding sideways through the leaves...freedom.

I have a beautiful maple tree that stands watch over my front yard. In the fall, it goes ablaze with the most beautiful yellow imaginable. During the first year in my house, this queenly maple decided to completely shed her royal autumn robes the week before Halloween. Perhaps she was welcoming me to "my" property. Naturally, I raked them into a massive pile for the neighborhood kids to enjoy, and boy did they ever...I might have enjoyed them a bit myself.

A pile of freshly-raked, dry leaves isn't quite as cushioned as you might imagine. However, if you leave it to brave the elements for a few weeks, this changes. The rain makes the pile a bit spongier and a bit more cushioned. The combination of wind AND rain smooths it much in the same manner as the pebbles that have been worn down by the river-flow.

My friends' pile of leaves has undergone just this transformation. It's smooth, and is surely by now is as cushiony-welcoming as a king-sized bed. We've not seen rain in some days, so it's surely not too soggy. The temperature outside being far more bearable than it's been of late, and the fact that the pile has been warmed by the sun all day is making it simply irresistible to my soul right now.

Pairing this magnificence with my morning readings of Annie Dillard's awe-filled descriptions of nature, I want nothing more right now than to go lay in that pile and stare into the blue sky till it turns to night.

Alas, it just can't be so this day. I've over-stayed my lunchtime, eaten my 20 oatmeal cookies, and must go paint. There will be other leaf piles, and I would certainly like to make sure this property remains in MY name (not the bank's) until I should choose to sell it.

If you have time, perhaps you'll go enjoy a leaf pile today and tell me about it.

Within and Without

I found a reading chair yesterday for $15 at Salvation Army. After a ton of Lysol, a sheet to cover it, and some other small additions, I now have a functional, albeit work-in-progress reading corner. I christened it this morning...

In keeping my promise to Annie Dillard, I worked through another two chapters of her book, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," this morning. The second chapter I read was entitled "The Present," and the first portion called to me enough that I had to force myself to finish the chapter before my mind slipped into reflection.

I became conscious of this world almost 29 years ago. I may not remember it, but even the days I don't remember made me who I am today. Those 29 years now belong to this mythological entity we call "The Past." I've always been intrigued by history - particularly the parts of it that happened before I was born - because there's no way for me to REALLY know if it ever actually happened. Seeing as everybody has a different spin on historical events, I often can't help but think sometimes that we're all in "The Matrix," and this is just a big hoax.

In this chapter, Dillard alludes to how self-consciousness robs us of our capacity to experience the present. She's right again. Somewhere in my childhood or adolescence, I learned self-analysis and became self-conscious. I found such a fascinating query (my own brain) that I think I may have been (and am probably still) trapped in the stifling world of introspect since then, and in turn, cut off from the world around me. I've exchanged the real thing for some alternative reality I've imagined. And what have I really figured out? I still use less than 10% of my brain, and haven't really discovered anything that hasn't been discovered before.

I realized this morning in my readings that I'm not sure I have ever really believed the world existed/will exist outside of MY existence. (i.e. when I'm born, the world is born with me...when I die, it dies with me.) I hate that.

Now, this doesn't stem from me thinking the world revolves around me (though I'm hardly exempt from such shallow thought). It stems from the fact that I've been so very wrapped up in solving the Rubik's cube in my head that I've forgotten the world exists outside of it.

I like Dillard's artistic, yet logical take on the world. The nature of the Scientific thought process is sort of a trapping process where we catch, classify, categorize and compartmentalize. The world is so vast and alive, however, that trying to do this is like trying to catch every ounce of the fire hydrant's spray with little glass vials. In essence, one could argue that Science tries to harness this beast of a universe and confine it to a box that we can understand...it's like trying to find the end of infinity. In Dillard's artistic process, the goal seems to be exploring the wonders of the world simply to appreciate its greatness...it literally expands before our eyes, and we grow to love infinity.

Now, please don't hear me downing Science here. I love Science, and it's so very important. Along with helping us be good stewards of our habitat, the understanding that Science provides makes it possible for us to appreciate this world's greatness in ways otherwise inconceivable. I think this is why nerdy scientists are so lovable, because every day they learn new ways to love the world. I like Dillard's thought process because I've spent so much time in the Scientific process that I've forgotten to appreciate the world and its inhabitants...in essence, I've forgotten to live. What's the point of spending all of this time trying to understand if it doesn't ultimately drive us to appreciate and enjoy the world around us. I know, it's cliche, but that doesn't negate its truth. The question I'm wondering about now is: How can these two processes work in conjunction?

It seems I've got a very quickly growing list of resolutions for 2010, but this is one thing I'd really like to work on. I'd like to shift my gaze to without rather than within.

Dear Annie Dillard:

My first English class in college was taught by Ms. Brookhart. She was neither a professor nor a doctor, but was quite effective nonetheless. Brookhart was a small woman with a rootsy (not hippie) vibe to her, always cloaked in the faint smell of cigarettes...it's funny how that smell can actually be endearing on some people. She didn't really dress to impress because she didn't have to. She was just that cool.

A wise and pragmatic woman, she handed my first assignment back to me ungraded - quietly saying something to the effect of, "Mr. Stoner, don't be cute, just do the assignment." I thought it would be "creative" to write the first part of the story from the third person, then switch to first person at a clutch, pivotal moment in the plot line. Brookhart didn't. Regardless, I really grew to love Brookhart and ended up taking my next English class with her as well.

I know we read at least four or five books in her class that first semester, but I don't remember any of them except the one we never actually got to read in class. It's a book called "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard. For ten years now, I've been trying to read this book, but it ends up making me think so much, I've never actually gotten much past the beginning of chapter two because of these two sentences (but particularly the second one):

"It is still the first week in January, and I've got great plans. I've been thinking about seeing."

This makes my mind spin every time I read it. When I finally was able to get past those sentences, I read Dillard's brilliant descriptions of blind people LITERALLY seeing for the first time. She also made some irresistible allusions to the wonderment with which the innocent, beautifully naive eyes and minds of children perceive the world.

I've gone to see the movie "Avatar" thrice already at the local 3D IMAX theatre. Particularly when sitting close to the screen, which I'm starting to believe is the best way to view an IMAX movie, I found myself getting a bit seasick due to the 3D view. I quickly found that if I stop focusing on only a small portion (the main character/action) of the screen and broaden my view to take the whole thing in, the queasiness subsides. What a telling metaphor.

So much in our modern day culture hinges on us keeping our eye on the ball, that we miss the fact that there are 17 other people on the baseball diamond...hundreds more in the stands. When did we lose or dismiss the wonderment we experienced as children?

I was at Lowe's just before Christmas picking up something arbitrary for a job when the guy in line next to me tapped me on the arm, smiled, and pointed across the store saying, "Remember those days?" He was pointing at a little boy with what looked like his grandmother. The little boy was staring wide-eyed at all the huge inflatable Christmas decorations, laughing with wonder, and Grandma was eating it up. My eyes fixed on the boy and his grandmother, through a faint smile laced with melancholy, I quietly replied, "I sure wish I could," never actually meeting my line-mate's eyes.

The sentence that follows Dillard's first two loaded sentences is this: "There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises." She is so very right.

I will have owned my house for five years this March. This is my land and nobody else's, except maybe the bank's if I stop paying my mortgage...but they've got too many houses already...I think they want me to keep it. Regularly, I've groomed my lawn and cleaned up my house, covering every inch of my property countless times, but I'm not sure if I've ever really stopped to look at it. How am I ever to appreciate what I have if I never stop to look at it?

This makes me think of the other people in my life as well. How often do I really stop to look in their eyes, to truly connect with them? And we've got four other primary senses that we may be neglecting as well. When the native tribe in "Avatar" greet each other, they do so by looking deep into the others' eyes and saying, "I see you" but only after they actually "see" the other person. I want to know what that feels like.

The bad news: Who can tell how much we've missed by not seeing, etc.?
The good news: What's to stop us from doing so today? Childlike wonderment in our dull adult bodies sounds like a vibrant adventure waiting to happen.

* * *

Dear Annie Dillard:

It's the second week of January and I've got great plans. I've been thinking about seeing too.

sincerely,

graham

p.s. I'm finally on chapter four of your book, and I promise to finish it this month.
p.p.s. I see you.