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The light in the trees
Aug. 14th, 2012 03:01 am
Currently at Toronto Pearson: 19. High today: 27.
Did you know that Venus was occulted by the moon this afternoon (Eastern time)? I wonder why exactly the transit a few months ago was a big deal, but there was barely a peep about today's occultation. ("Trasit of Venus" turns up 1630 hits on google news; "occultation of Venus" turns up 24, of which 13 are from National Geographic. Maybe the Olympics has something to do with it. (Speaking of which, I have found myself noticing Audis lately. This was initially prompted by seeing an Audi parked next door at the cottage--fancy car to be braving the back roads--but they were seeming to be standing out far more than could be due just to that, and then it struck me the other day that the Audi logo kinda looks like something, oh dear....)) I only accidentally found out about it myself--I was actually looking for the crescent moon this afternoon to try to find Venus, since I knew they were pretty much on top of each other; I didn't know the moon was right on top of Venus. I couldn't find the moon among the high clouds, anyway. This ongoing stretch of unsettled weather may mess up the best chance in a while to see Mercury, too, and the convergence of Mars, Saturn, and Spica (with the moon next week), which will be almost in a little straight line tomorrow evening as Mars sails between this year's temporary twins. Apart from clouds, the trouble with them (and Mercury in the morning) is to find someplace with a long enough horizon to see them.
So, I said a while ago that when I first picked up Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, years ago (when I'm afraid I was a more strident person myself), I had been turned off by its quotability. Well, there's just a couple of things I copied down out of it this time. (I have, however, been telling L. all kinds of things "Annie Dillard says", in a way that--oh dear--reminds me of going up to that cottage where I first picked up Annie Dillard years ago and telling my friend E. all kinds of things that, uh, someone says. Like I say, I couldn't help but love seriousness of certain kinds. Including unserious ones. Er.) I copied down just this couple because they speak to what I take to be the most basic problems in (my) life. The first is this:
Thomas Merton wrote, "There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues." There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.
(The last sentence is the one that matters, although "muddle along in quiet desperation" might be more the thing than "sulk along on the edge of rage" ... though that too. This is a thought I kept thinking when we were thinking about moving to Coe Hill. That situation was all wrong, and it's painful to think of how all wrong it un-evidently was, but one of the things it got me thinking about was how resistant you can be to having a good life because you feel somehow duty-bound to have a bad one, or at least a worse one ... and how horrifically perverse that is.)
And the second is this:
Do the barnacle larvae care? Does the lacewing who eats her eggs care? If they do not care, then why am I making all this fuss? If I am a freak, then why don't I hush?
... which speaks to, or near to, the question of whether I have something important to say "in philosophy", and whether it matters to say it or not.
Well, look, here is what it comes down to, for me, about Annie Dillard and me. One of her key moments is stopping at a gas station on the highway and seeing the light (of what poking around the internet about Terrence Malick has taught me to call "the golden hour") in the trees. That is her moment of grace, which she keeps coming back to, as a moment. (She uses the word Augenblick, which is one of a couple of things that makes me wonder whether she might have read some Heidegger, but maybe rather some Eckhart or what have you.) This is what really frustrates me about her, about everyone, about me: the light is ALWAYS in the trees. (Late in the book, though, she does give this some acknowledgment.) I know it, but ... ah, I was going to say that I don't live in the presence of the light in the trees, but, you know, I do, like I am here in the presence of the cat asleep at my feet: sometimes she's evident but mostly she's not (even though she's snoring!). Even those who live in the presence of God don't, can't, attend to God's presence all the time; God isn't evident to them all the time. (Most of the time? How much of the time?) But let's not make this about God, exactly, yet. (Maybe not for a long, long time yet.) Anyway. I want to say that I think (fearful that I am making an itsy-bitsy theoretical statue of it; why don't I hush?) what Annie Dillard is missing is what Heidegger calls the "ontological difference" between beings and being--for her, being lit up is a way for some thing such as a tree to be, in contrast to being parasitized by wasps being a way for some thing such as a cricket to be. Being lit up has to the trees the relation of predicate to subject, accident to substance. For me (after Heidegger), in that golden light in the trees there is not only that graceful moment of the gold-lit-ness of the tree, but the insistence of the revelation of being, which is always revealing itself, but rarely so insistently as when that golden light is on the trees. That's why, for me, there is no tallying up of moments of grace against moments of evil, or at least not at the most fundamental level; the eternal revelation of being is an eternal moment of grace.
(One of course might justifiably respond to this as one responds to Stoics, that this is laughable and insulting in the face of torture, squalor, oppression, misery. I'm not going to do anything with that now except to put it there and acknowledge that it's a fair point. Well, one thing to venture: you can condemn creation, after that tallying up, and still live in the presence of the grace of being. But the grace of being is not evident to someone on the rack, and I want to say that that is the evil, that is evil itself. But I want too much to say that, and I'm not so sure that this will ultimately hang together nicely.)
So, the problem for me is not whether beings care, or the totality of beings cares, or whether there is a caring super-being (though this is obviously not an unimportant question), but rather whether there is any sensible way to say that being itself something-like-cares. I've latched on to these words of Heidegger's--we belong, we listen, we respond to being. That is what we are. We are response-able; the question is whether that makes us responsible. We can respond; there is an urgency to our ability to respond, since nothing else will unless we do, but what does it, how can it, matter whether we respond or not?
Today in the backyard: an Eastern black swallowtail butterfly:
If I've ever seen one of those before, I don't recall it. (There were plenty of tiger swallowtails a couple of months ago; I wonder where they all went.) ( Here it is with one of the monarchs. )
Did you know that Venus was occulted by the moon this afternoon (Eastern time)? I wonder why exactly the transit a few months ago was a big deal, but there was barely a peep about today's occultation. ("Trasit of Venus" turns up 1630 hits on google news; "occultation of Venus" turns up 24, of which 13 are from National Geographic. Maybe the Olympics has something to do with it. (Speaking of which, I have found myself noticing Audis lately. This was initially prompted by seeing an Audi parked next door at the cottage--fancy car to be braving the back roads--but they were seeming to be standing out far more than could be due just to that, and then it struck me the other day that the Audi logo kinda looks like something, oh dear....)) I only accidentally found out about it myself--I was actually looking for the crescent moon this afternoon to try to find Venus, since I knew they were pretty much on top of each other; I didn't know the moon was right on top of Venus. I couldn't find the moon among the high clouds, anyway. This ongoing stretch of unsettled weather may mess up the best chance in a while to see Mercury, too, and the convergence of Mars, Saturn, and Spica (with the moon next week), which will be almost in a little straight line tomorrow evening as Mars sails between this year's temporary twins. Apart from clouds, the trouble with them (and Mercury in the morning) is to find someplace with a long enough horizon to see them.
So, I said a while ago that when I first picked up Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, years ago (when I'm afraid I was a more strident person myself), I had been turned off by its quotability. Well, there's just a couple of things I copied down out of it this time. (I have, however, been telling L. all kinds of things "Annie Dillard says", in a way that--oh dear--reminds me of going up to that cottage where I first picked up Annie Dillard years ago and telling my friend E. all kinds of things that, uh, someone says. Like I say, I couldn't help but love seriousness of certain kinds. Including unserious ones. Er.) I copied down just this couple because they speak to what I take to be the most basic problems in (my) life. The first is this:
Thomas Merton wrote, "There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues." There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.
(The last sentence is the one that matters, although "muddle along in quiet desperation" might be more the thing than "sulk along on the edge of rage" ... though that too. This is a thought I kept thinking when we were thinking about moving to Coe Hill. That situation was all wrong, and it's painful to think of how all wrong it un-evidently was, but one of the things it got me thinking about was how resistant you can be to having a good life because you feel somehow duty-bound to have a bad one, or at least a worse one ... and how horrifically perverse that is.)
And the second is this:
Do the barnacle larvae care? Does the lacewing who eats her eggs care? If they do not care, then why am I making all this fuss? If I am a freak, then why don't I hush?
... which speaks to, or near to, the question of whether I have something important to say "in philosophy", and whether it matters to say it or not.
Well, look, here is what it comes down to, for me, about Annie Dillard and me. One of her key moments is stopping at a gas station on the highway and seeing the light (of what poking around the internet about Terrence Malick has taught me to call "the golden hour") in the trees. That is her moment of grace, which she keeps coming back to, as a moment. (She uses the word Augenblick, which is one of a couple of things that makes me wonder whether she might have read some Heidegger, but maybe rather some Eckhart or what have you.) This is what really frustrates me about her, about everyone, about me: the light is ALWAYS in the trees. (Late in the book, though, she does give this some acknowledgment.) I know it, but ... ah, I was going to say that I don't live in the presence of the light in the trees, but, you know, I do, like I am here in the presence of the cat asleep at my feet: sometimes she's evident but mostly she's not (even though she's snoring!). Even those who live in the presence of God don't, can't, attend to God's presence all the time; God isn't evident to them all the time. (Most of the time? How much of the time?) But let's not make this about God, exactly, yet. (Maybe not for a long, long time yet.) Anyway. I want to say that I think (fearful that I am making an itsy-bitsy theoretical statue of it; why don't I hush?) what Annie Dillard is missing is what Heidegger calls the "ontological difference" between beings and being--for her, being lit up is a way for some thing such as a tree to be, in contrast to being parasitized by wasps being a way for some thing such as a cricket to be. Being lit up has to the trees the relation of predicate to subject, accident to substance. For me (after Heidegger), in that golden light in the trees there is not only that graceful moment of the gold-lit-ness of the tree, but the insistence of the revelation of being, which is always revealing itself, but rarely so insistently as when that golden light is on the trees. That's why, for me, there is no tallying up of moments of grace against moments of evil, or at least not at the most fundamental level; the eternal revelation of being is an eternal moment of grace.
(One of course might justifiably respond to this as one responds to Stoics, that this is laughable and insulting in the face of torture, squalor, oppression, misery. I'm not going to do anything with that now except to put it there and acknowledge that it's a fair point. Well, one thing to venture: you can condemn creation, after that tallying up, and still live in the presence of the grace of being. But the grace of being is not evident to someone on the rack, and I want to say that that is the evil, that is evil itself. But I want too much to say that, and I'm not so sure that this will ultimately hang together nicely.)
So, the problem for me is not whether beings care, or the totality of beings cares, or whether there is a caring super-being (though this is obviously not an unimportant question), but rather whether there is any sensible way to say that being itself something-like-cares. I've latched on to these words of Heidegger's--we belong, we listen, we respond to being. That is what we are. We are response-able; the question is whether that makes us responsible. We can respond; there is an urgency to our ability to respond, since nothing else will unless we do, but what does it, how can it, matter whether we respond or not?
Today in the backyard: an Eastern black swallowtail butterfly:
If I've ever seen one of those before, I don't recall it. (There were plenty of tiger swallowtails a couple of months ago; I wonder where they all went.) ( Here it is with one of the monarchs. )
