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For the time being
Nov. 20th, 2012 11:16 pm
Currently at Toronto Pearson: 3. High today: 9. Lots of fog lately. Lows in Bancroft have been running 5-10 degrees lower than in the city, but it got up to 10 there today. By 7 this evening it was -2 there and 7 here.
I finished Annie Dillard's For the Time Being last night, because my lecture yesterday left me unable to do much of anything else besides blow my brains out. (I have had two lectures this term that have left me unable to do much of anything besides blow my brains out; they've been the two lectures after the two papers have been due. Thank God the last paper is due after the last lecture. Maybe the most horrible thing about this course is that it would probably take teaching it twice more to be sure that I shouldn't teach it. I would need to do it once more to try it out in a different direction, and then once more again to try to get the different direction right.) Something surprising I learned from For the Time Being, which is maybe most surprising in that I didn't know it before: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin--about whom I knew nothing, really, except that he was some kind of theologian who wrote a used-bookstore-greatest-hits book called The Phenomenon of Man, from which Pierre Trudeau supposedly read to Margaret Sinclair in a canoe, or something--was also a paleontologist, and in fact the paleontologist who dug up Peking Man. (OK, Uncle Wikipedia's story does not so much have it that Teilhard dug up Peking Man; more that he was there while Peking Man was being dug up.) Teilhard, Dillard's story goes, spent much of his life digging up bones in China because the Vatican did not enjoy his theologizing. Dillard is evidently frustrated with Teilhard because he did not tell the Vatican to stick it, and marry the woman he loved and so forth. Anyway, Dillard's story also goes that Peking Man and his buddies did not survive World War II, and it is believed by some [by whom? citation needed] that starving Chinese villagers, after the Japanese invasion, ground up Peking Man's skull and drank it (Peking Man's skull having been discovered in the first place, so the story goes, due to the Chinese habit of grinding up old bones and drinking them: supposedly somebody traced a tooth in the possession of a pharmacist back to the site where they dug up Peking Man).
For the Time Being is mostly about dying, and God, and being born, and sand. I think Dillard has a point that we don't make a big enough deal about being born. I'm not so sure she has a point that we don't make a big enough deal about dying. She seems mighty offended about dying. There are a lot more human beings in For the Time Being than there are in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. (There is one story about human beings that stands out in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The creek is rising, and someone's house is being flooded. Dillard joins the neighbours in trying to save the house, or stuff from the house. They're walking back and forth across the top of a wall that's only wide enough for one person. Dillard and a man meet on the wall; they clasp each other by the wrists and swing around each other and carry on. You might think that this is a revealing story, in that it is the only story, or the only story that stands out, about human beings in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.)
There's this one story about human beings in For the Time Being that reminds me of one of my own, which you may recall: Dillard is in the desert, in Israel, I think--there are stories about Israel, and sand, and being born, and the first emperor of China, and other things, woven through the book--and she sees a blue crab in the sand. She looks around for someone to show the crab to, and she sees this Dutch guy--I don't know how she knew it was a Dutch guy--and she shouts out to him, "Mijnheer!", or something like that, and he comes and looks at the crab with her, like the guy who shouted out at me, "Amigo!", and pointed out the rabbit in the ravine, and told me about the rabbit in the moon. (Sometimes it feels like a terrible gamble to point things out to people, in case they don't care; it would be terrible if they don't care. Sometimes, I guess, you just feel like of course they'll care, even if they might not think they do.)
For the Time Being quotes a number of people, including Teilhard, saying things about things glowing and whatnot that sound like things I might say, except with more God. I recently came across a series of books by a guy called Stephen David Ross about the good, which seems like it says things a lot like what I might say about the good, except with more long quotations. I may be coming back around to one of those periods in which I don't know what the point of saying anything is. (But there is always, at least, a point in pointing out crabs in the desert and rabbits in the ravine.)
One thing in particular has made me wonder whether Dillard doesn't take a bit of poetic license now and then: she says in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that muskrats are hard to see, that you have to stalk them carefully. I dunno, that may be true down there at Tinker Creek; around the cottage, not so much. I mean, they're more interested in not being seen than squirrels are, but probably no more so than the beavers and minks of my experience.
I've certainly never been able to get a picture like that of the minks that skulk around the shores (though, then again, that's the only time I've been able to get a picture of a muskrat at all, so, small sample); this is the best I've got of them:
As far as I can tell, these things are minks and not common weasels because minks, apparently, are solid brown, whereas common weasels are (commonly?) white underneath. Nevertheless, we call them "Weezell", because, way back when, L. saw a tube-mammal-type creature in the rocks by Halifax harbour, and later asked a guy at the Halifax natural history museum what it might've been, and he (being Quebecois or somesuch) suggested that it was wee-zell.
Actually, all unidentified aquatic creatures are, by default, Weezell, including, for some time, baby muskrats (which seemed to have a party every night all summer long under the dock that big one is headed for), and also this thing that wiggles weirdly across the top of the water in the mornings around sunrise, meandering all around in front of the cottage, which I thought might be Weezell carrying baby Weezell, before I discovered that it was, in fact, this:
It seems that just this one pike, just this year, decided that a good way to eat is to wiggle around the top of the water with its mouth open and swallow whatever happens to be in the way.
I finished Annie Dillard's For the Time Being last night, because my lecture yesterday left me unable to do much of anything else besides blow my brains out. (I have had two lectures this term that have left me unable to do much of anything besides blow my brains out; they've been the two lectures after the two papers have been due. Thank God the last paper is due after the last lecture. Maybe the most horrible thing about this course is that it would probably take teaching it twice more to be sure that I shouldn't teach it. I would need to do it once more to try it out in a different direction, and then once more again to try to get the different direction right.) Something surprising I learned from For the Time Being, which is maybe most surprising in that I didn't know it before: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin--about whom I knew nothing, really, except that he was some kind of theologian who wrote a used-bookstore-greatest-hits book called The Phenomenon of Man, from which Pierre Trudeau supposedly read to Margaret Sinclair in a canoe, or something--was also a paleontologist, and in fact the paleontologist who dug up Peking Man. (OK, Uncle Wikipedia's story does not so much have it that Teilhard dug up Peking Man; more that he was there while Peking Man was being dug up.) Teilhard, Dillard's story goes, spent much of his life digging up bones in China because the Vatican did not enjoy his theologizing. Dillard is evidently frustrated with Teilhard because he did not tell the Vatican to stick it, and marry the woman he loved and so forth. Anyway, Dillard's story also goes that Peking Man and his buddies did not survive World War II, and it is believed by some [by whom? citation needed] that starving Chinese villagers, after the Japanese invasion, ground up Peking Man's skull and drank it (Peking Man's skull having been discovered in the first place, so the story goes, due to the Chinese habit of grinding up old bones and drinking them: supposedly somebody traced a tooth in the possession of a pharmacist back to the site where they dug up Peking Man).
For the Time Being is mostly about dying, and God, and being born, and sand. I think Dillard has a point that we don't make a big enough deal about being born. I'm not so sure she has a point that we don't make a big enough deal about dying. She seems mighty offended about dying. There are a lot more human beings in For the Time Being than there are in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. (There is one story about human beings that stands out in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The creek is rising, and someone's house is being flooded. Dillard joins the neighbours in trying to save the house, or stuff from the house. They're walking back and forth across the top of a wall that's only wide enough for one person. Dillard and a man meet on the wall; they clasp each other by the wrists and swing around each other and carry on. You might think that this is a revealing story, in that it is the only story, or the only story that stands out, about human beings in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.)
There's this one story about human beings in For the Time Being that reminds me of one of my own, which you may recall: Dillard is in the desert, in Israel, I think--there are stories about Israel, and sand, and being born, and the first emperor of China, and other things, woven through the book--and she sees a blue crab in the sand. She looks around for someone to show the crab to, and she sees this Dutch guy--I don't know how she knew it was a Dutch guy--and she shouts out to him, "Mijnheer!", or something like that, and he comes and looks at the crab with her, like the guy who shouted out at me, "Amigo!", and pointed out the rabbit in the ravine, and told me about the rabbit in the moon. (Sometimes it feels like a terrible gamble to point things out to people, in case they don't care; it would be terrible if they don't care. Sometimes, I guess, you just feel like of course they'll care, even if they might not think they do.)
For the Time Being quotes a number of people, including Teilhard, saying things about things glowing and whatnot that sound like things I might say, except with more God. I recently came across a series of books by a guy called Stephen David Ross about the good, which seems like it says things a lot like what I might say about the good, except with more long quotations. I may be coming back around to one of those periods in which I don't know what the point of saying anything is. (But there is always, at least, a point in pointing out crabs in the desert and rabbits in the ravine.)
One thing in particular has made me wonder whether Dillard doesn't take a bit of poetic license now and then: she says in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that muskrats are hard to see, that you have to stalk them carefully. I dunno, that may be true down there at Tinker Creek; around the cottage, not so much. I mean, they're more interested in not being seen than squirrels are, but probably no more so than the beavers and minks of my experience.
I've certainly never been able to get a picture like that of the minks that skulk around the shores (though, then again, that's the only time I've been able to get a picture of a muskrat at all, so, small sample); this is the best I've got of them:
As far as I can tell, these things are minks and not common weasels because minks, apparently, are solid brown, whereas common weasels are (commonly?) white underneath. Nevertheless, we call them "Weezell", because, way back when, L. saw a tube-mammal-type creature in the rocks by Halifax harbour, and later asked a guy at the Halifax natural history museum what it might've been, and he (being Quebecois or somesuch) suggested that it was wee-zell.
Actually, all unidentified aquatic creatures are, by default, Weezell, including, for some time, baby muskrats (which seemed to have a party every night all summer long under the dock that big one is headed for), and also this thing that wiggles weirdly across the top of the water in the mornings around sunrise, meandering all around in front of the cottage, which I thought might be Weezell carrying baby Weezell, before I discovered that it was, in fact, this:
It seems that just this one pike, just this year, decided that a good way to eat is to wiggle around the top of the water with its mouth open and swallow whatever happens to be in the way.
