I am reading a really cool book by Annie Dillard, called Pilgrim At Tinker Creek. I love the way she writes, and the fascination she has for life and nature. Here is an interesting bit that I read this morning--It snowed. It snowed all yesterday and never emptied the sky, although the clouds looked so low and heavy they might drop all at once with a thud. The light is diffuse and hueless, like the light on paper inside a pewter bowl. The snow looks light and the sky dark, but in fact the sky is lighter than the snow. Obviously the thing illuminated cannot be lighter than its illuminator. The classical demonstration of this point involves simply laying a mirror flat on the snow so that it reflects in its surface the sky, and comparing by sight this value to that of the snow. This is all very well, even conclusive, but the illusion persists. The dark is overhead and the light at my feet; I'm walking upside-down in the sky.
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You know, I quoted from this book in the front of my thesis "The great hurrah about wild animals is that they exist at all, and the even greater hurrah is the actual moment of seeing them, because they have a nice dignity and prefer to have nothing to do with me ..." - or something like that. But I have never managed to get a hold of the whole book (have a few others of AD's though and she is a good writer). It's always unavailable when I go looking. But you have inspired me to keep trying.
That is really cool-- I haven't met many people who know her. That's a great quote, I haven't gotten to that bit yet. This is only the second of hers Iv'e read. I read An American Childhood, which by about a page in was already one of my favourite books of all time! I REALLY love that book. btw- Gleebooks definately have Pilgrim at Tinker Creek..
Oh no, and I just happen to walk along Glebe Point Road all the time these days ... I have to have book rations or I'd ruin myself on books.
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