I finished this a few days ago so I could let it all sink in. Maybe it still hasn’t, because I still harbor this lingering sense of melancholic awe akin to shock, and knowing how to respond to such a foreign feeling is perplexing. Here we are at the doorstep of the last blog post, and as I look back on my work here with the perspective Dillard lent me I can’t help but hear a cynical voice that is already “growing tired with the world” as she puts it in her afterword. And that’s ridiculous because I haven’t seen the world yet, I’m 23 and still on my parents health insurance. I can save weariness for when I’ve been around long enough for the world to slap me around a few times. I want to see much more in my bold twenties than my small cynical box is currently allowing. Perhaps I’ll trade this box in for a cabin.
Once I get to my cabin I’ll stay put and begin my inward pilgrimage like Dillard. Everything we’ve read up to this point features humans carefully approaching nature to study it, as if we’re outsiders to the phenomena of this universe that spat us out. By staying put and letting the natural world come to her, Dillard gains perspectives of unity rather than separation. If we are able to see ourselves in the things that surround us, a deeper level of understanding emerges in this connection. This is the difference between observing nature (as we have been reading up until this book) and participating in nature. Rarely do we want to be the ones cheering on the sidelines, we’d rather be a part of the team that made it to glory. Why should this maxim shift when it comes to observing our worldly companions? In becoming part of the team, I’d imagine it to be simple to experience the passion and wonder that Dillard articulates throughout this book.
One of my favorite examples of transcendental seeing/connecting (I think these terms should be synonymous in reference to this text) happens in the chapter Winter, where she watches the birds, and personifies their actions down to the cellular level. “Could tiny birds be sifting through me right now, birds winging through the gaps between my cells, touching nothing, but quickening in my tissues, fleet?” (42). Perhaps this is not at all useful on a scientific level, but on an existential level it can be eye opening. Dillard lets her imagination turn whatever she is studying into a part of herself, as a potential way to unravel her own biological inner workings. The limitlessness of Dillard’s perspectives makes this book a uniquely delicate blend of science and—dare I say—poetry.
There were so many points of admiration for me in this book that it’s impossible to rank which ones are important enough to discuss here. Many of you mentioned in last weeks post that the style is pretty rich, which I wont disagree with, but I’m not sure it would be in the forefront of my realizations about this text had it not already been planted in my mind. It’s rich but effective, and when something works as well as this does I immediately find myself immersed in the content rather than syntax. I did not experience any reader fatigue, but perhaps my bias lies in some sort of love I found myself falling into the clearer I saw what Dillard was putting in front of me.
Perhaps the coolest parallel Dillard illustrates between the animals and herself is her restlessness for migration in the chapter “Northing.” She has been a part of nature for so long at this point that she seems to have reawakened the primal animalistic spirit inside of herself. She does not want to follow her animal counterparts south, however, and hungers for the north. I share her appetite here, and agree with her symbolism as she states in her afterword, “the soul’s emptying itself in readiness for the incursion of the divine.” The arctic landscape is so desolate and isolated that it could be viewed as apocalyptic. Dillard has a deep appreciation and connection with nature, yet she wants to move north where she can stand on top of the world and watch it fall away. On the surface this seems depressive, maybe even a little crazy. But at the same time, there is a sense of purity and beauty mixed with danger in the extreme north, and all of these elements are the big picture embodiment of the small things that Dillard has evolved the eyes to see.
Well, here we are, perched on the precipice of prose induced blogging that gave me so much anxiety this semester, and now I’m having mixed feelings about ending it. But where one project ends another begins, and with this off the list I have just a little more room for new ideas to pop into my head, and I can begin writing that craziness while I’m still fortunate enough to humor the imagination.
“How boldly committed to ideas we are in our twenties!”
Adam, I really like the phrase “melancholic awe akin to shock.” I’m not sure if you’re describing the end of blogging or the end of Dillard’s book, but what a great way to describe the aftermath of a captivating experiencing. I also like your analysis of Dillard’s “staying put.” I think she might suggest that your ideal cabin is unnecessary. After all, she isn’t experiencing the biodiversity of the Amazon, she’s hanging out in a relatively populous section of Virginia. She doesn’t have to go Northing to write about the North. Maybe to write well and experience the world thoughtfully you don’t have to move somewhere before staying put.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, she does reference her previous life and Pittsburg, and how this is a world away from her. I think a lot of people feel the need to move in order to experience a “new” place from a fresh perspective. In a way, this is kind of what science writing is. You might be most successful writing about a field or idea you’re coming to for the first time. I’m sure there are scientists out there who could write beautifully on subjects outside their own field, but enter passive robot mode when they’re writing about their work. It’s kind of like staring at a heavily researched paper until it sucks. No amount of writing will cure it until you at least talk to someone else about it and force yourself to change your perspective.
Liam
Adam, you stood on the cusp of yet another idea to discuss with this statement: “The limitlessness of Dillard’s perspectives makes this book a uniquely delicate blend of science and—dare I say—poetry.” Let’s talk genre-benders. What do we create such a binary between science and poetry? Or rather, what mainly constitutes this binary? I found a very intriguing quote concerning this topic in an online article called “The Critical State of the Critical Review Article” by Bentley Glass: “For the scientist language becomes a quest for clarity, for a purification of ‘the language of the tribe,’ so that what is said can mean one thing and one thing only, whereas the poet and the dramatist seek to purify language too, but by recasting experience in uncommon, rich, and subtle expressions that may reflect the private world of experience rather than the public world of generality, law, and predictability” (415). I should probably say more, but I’m still wrapping my mind around it.
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