Upon completing the narrative, I still don't know what the hell is going on. This time, though, I found meaning withing the sometimes-chaotic impermanence of her ideas. Before I reveal this meaning, I think the best way to go about it is in the same manner as Dillard- to share my favorite individual passages in their unique beauty before attempting to paint a common theme.
Page 8: "Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think you can go it alone."
Page 13: "'...the world has been gradually lighting up and blazing before my eyes until it has come to surround me, entirely lit up from within.'"
Page 36: "There might as well be a rough angel guarding this ward, or a dragon, or an upwelling current that dashes boats on rocks. There might well be an old stone cairn in the hall by the elevators, or a well, or a ruined shrine wall where people still hear bells. Should we not remove our shoes, drink potions, take baths? For this is surely the wildest deep-sea vent on earth: This is where the people come out."
Page 44: "'If I should lose all faith in God', he wrote, 'I think that I should continue to believe invincibly in the world.'"
Page 47: "...simply take yourself--in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love--and multiply it by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it."
Page 71: "Is it useful and wise to think of God as punctiform? I think so."
Page 85: "Many times in Christian churches I have heard the pastor say to God, 'All your actions show your wisdom and love.' Each time, I reach in vain for the courage to rise and shout, 'That's a lie!'--just to put things on a solid footing."
Page 94: "We are one of those animals, the ones whose neocortexes swelled, who just happen to write encyclopedias and fly to the moon. Can anyone believe this?"
Page 100: "...someone thought of making, and made, this difficult, impossible, beautiful thing."
Page 119: "Are we ready to think of all humanity as a living tree, carrying on splendidly without us?"
Page 160: "'Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.'"
Page 169: "I don't know beans about God."
Page 197: "'It says in the Bible that to save a life is to save the entire world.'"
Whew. That's not even all of the passages I had marked, but the ones I couldn't bear to leave out of this blog. Looking back at them all and the narrative as a whole, the overriding theme is that of the importance of life in context of the individual and in the context of humanity. Although Dillard is overly-careful to keep her direct opinions out of the work, she goes through lengths to prove both that: A)humans are mere, insignificant numbers and B)each human is as important as the universe that surrounds us. These two themes come across as contradictory, but they in fact work together to relay the message that no one being is more important than the next in this existence. Each life contributes to the impossible beauty that is life itself. We are each and all more important than we can ever fully grasp or imagine.
And this is about as close to explaining life as you can get.
No comments:
Post a Comment