June 22, 2008

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3 comments:

Unknown said...

this reminded me, for some reason, about this powerful annie dillard essay called "living like weasels." though the whole thing is wonderful, this is the part i love:

"We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.

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 you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles."

June 23, 2008 at 8:01 AM
A and O said...

Wow, I really need to read this essay--she has such a beautifully convincing way of delivering her point of view.
I'm pretty sure Annie Dillard could tell me that the earth was flat in her intimate and poetic way and I would very much want to believe her.

June 23, 2008 at 11:44 AM
Unknown said...

i know--she is one fierce writer (thank you, project runway!) it's a short essay: http://www.sheftman.com/ewrt1a/dillard/weasel.html

June 23, 2008 at 1:11 PM

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