Ideas I want to write about
But it's also true that we're increasingly the kind of people who don't want to rest – who get antsy and anxious if we don't feel we're being productive. The usual result is that we push ourselves beyond the sane limits of daily activity, when doing less would have been more productive in the long run.
Oliver Burkeman • The three-or-four-hours rule for getting creative work done
. Presto chango. The audience, if there is an audience at all, is dizzy from head-turning, dazed.
Annie Dillard • Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (pdf).pdf
Like Austin’s “Chexto Mixto” from Catalina
In making the thick darkness a swaddling band for the sea, God “set bars and doors” and said, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.” But have we come even that far? Have we rowed out to the thick darkness, or are we all playing pinochle in the bottom of the boat?
Annie Dillard • Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (pdf).pdf
This is how I feel about a lot of people, a lot of the time.
We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise
Annie Dillard • Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (pdf).pdf
Maybe I can wail my own crumbling body in the rocking chair at 2:45pm just a few hours before therapy. Maybe I can hurl my frustration by my own tired body, my own limited brain, my distracted attention span, my struggle with other people’s decisions, how long everything takes, and how hard it is for me to slow down.
How could so many hide in the tree without my seeing them?
Annie Dillard • Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (pdf).pdf
As I walked along the grassy edge of the island, I got better and better at seeing frogs both in and out of the water. I learned to recognize, slowing down, the difference in texture of the light reflected from mud bank, water, grass, or frog.
Annie Dillard • Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (pdf).pdf
The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.
Annie Dillard • Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (pdf).pdf
Yes, it is.
We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence.... “Seem like we’re just set down here,” a woman said to me recently, “and don’t nobody know why.”