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and shatter the walls of my cells. The harvest is in, the granaries
full. The broadleaf trees of the world s forests have cast their
various fruits: Oak, a nut; Sycamore, achenes; California Laurel,
a drupe; Maple, a samara; Locust, a legume; Pomegranate, a berry;
Buckeye, a capsule; Apple, a pome. Now the twin leaves of the
seedling chestnut oak on the Carvin s Cove path have dried,
dropped, and blown; the acorn itself is shrunk and sere. But the
sheath of the stem holds water and the white root still delicately
sucks, porous and permeable, mute. The death of the self of which
the great writers speak is no violent act. It is merely the joining
of the great rock
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 263
heart of the earth in its roll. It is merely the slow cessation of the
will s sprints and the intellect s chatter: it is waiting like a hollow
bell with stilled tongue. Fuge, tace, quiesce. The waiting itself is
the thing.
Last year I saw three migrating Canada geese flying low over the
frozen duck pond where I stood. I heard a heart-stopping blast
of speed before I saw them; I felt the flayed air slap at my face.
They thundered across the pond, and back, and back again: I
swear I have never seen such speed, such single-mindedness,
such flailing of wings. They froze the duck pond as they flew;
they rang the air; they disappeared. I think of this now, and my
brain vibrates to the blurred bastinado of feathered bone. Our
God shall come, it says in a psalm for Advent, and shall not
keep silence; there shall go before him a consuming fire, and a
mighty tempest shall be stirred up round about him. It is the
shock I remember. Not only does something come if you wait,
but it pours over you like a waterfall, like a tidal wave. You wait
in all naturalness without expectation or hope, emptied, translu-
cent, and that which comes rocks and topples you; it will shear,
loose, launch, winnow, grind.
I have glutted on richness and welcome hyssop. This distant
silver November sky, these sere branches of trees, shed and
bearing their pure and secret colors this is the real world, not
the world gilded and pearled. I stand under wiped skies directly,
naked, without intercessors. Frost winds have lofted my body s
bones with all their restless sprints to an airborne raven s glide.
I am buoyed by a calm and effortless longing, an angled pitch of
the will, like the set of the wings of the monarch which climbed
a hill by falling still.
There is the wave breast of thanksgiving a catching God s eye
with the easy motions of praise and a time for it. In ancient
264 / Annie Dillard
Israel s rites for a voluntary offering of thanksgiving, the priest
comes before the altar in clean linen, empty-handed. Into his
hands is placed the breast of the slain unblemished ram of con-
secration: and he waves it as a wave offering before the Lord. The
wind s knife has done its work. Thanks be to God.
15
The Waters of Separation
They will question thee concerning what they should expend.
Say: The abundance.
The Koran
Fair weather cometh out of the north: with God is terrible majesty.
Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star,
lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and
longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing
touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan
and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns
at the ready for what?
And today was fair, hot, even; I woke and my fingers were hot
and dry to their own touch, like the skin of a stranger. I stood at
the window, the bay window on which one summer a waxen-
looking grasshopper had breathed puff puff, and
266 / Annie Dillard
thought, I won t see this year again, not again so innocent; and
longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. For the Heavenly
Father desires that we should see, said Ruysbroeck, and that
is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathom-
able word and nothing else. But what is that word? Is this mys-
tery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib
cage; when I stirred it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing
ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones,
and I couldn t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or
a note but I couldn t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense.
I wrenched myself from the window. I stepped outside.
Here by the mock-orange hedge was a bee, a honeybee, sprung
from its hive by the heat. Instantly I had a wonderful idea. I had
recently read that ancient Romans thought that bees were killed
by echoes. It seemed a far-fetched and pleasing notion, that a
spoken word or falling rock given back by cliffs that airy nothing
which nevertheless bore and spread the uncomprehended impact
of something should stun these sturdy creatures right out of
the air. I could put it to the test. It was as good an excuse for a
walk as any; it might still the bell, even, or temper it true.
I knew where I could find an echo; I d have to take my chances
on finding another December bee. I tied a sweater around my
waist and headed for the quarry. The experiment didn t pan out,
exactly, but the trip led on to other excursions and vigils up and
down the landscape of this brief year s end day.
It was hot; I never needed the sweater. A great tall cloud moved
elegantly across an invisible walkway in the upper air, sliding
on its flat foot like an enormous proud snail. I smelled silt on the
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 267
wind, turkey, laundry, leaves& my God what a world. There is
no accounting for one second of it. On the quarry path through
the woods I saw again the discarded aquarium; now, almost a
year later, still only one side of the aquarium s glass was shattered.
I could plant a terrarium here, I thought; I could transfer the two
square feet of forest floor under the glass to above the glass, framing
it, hiding a penny, and saying to passers-by look! look! here is
two square feet of the world.
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