Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and EncountersHarper Collins, 13.10.2009 - 176 Seiten "A collection of meditations like polished stones--painstakingly worded, tough-minded, yet partial to mystery, and peerless when it comes to injecting larger resonances into the natural world." — Kirkus Reviews Here, in this compelling assembly of writings, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard explores the world of natural facts and human meanings. Veering away from the long, meditative studies of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek or Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard explores and celebrates moments of spirituality, dipping into descriptions of encounters with flora and fauna, stars, and more, from Ecuador to Miami. |
Inhalt
| 9 | |
An Expedition to the Pole | 29 |
Living Like Weasels | 65 |
In the Jungle | 71 |
The Deer at Providencia | 78 |
Teaching a Stone to Talk | 85 |
On a Hill Far Away | 95 |
Lenses | 102 |
The Galápagos | 108 |
A Field of Silence | 130 |
God in the Doorway | 137 |
Sojourner | 146 |
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Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
Alan McDonald Arctic baby beaks binoculars birds blinked blue called child circle cloud clowns colorless stripes cottage creek Daleville dark dead deer drifted enormous eyes face feet finches floating floe Franklin expedition frozen Galápagos Galápagos islands grass green hand hill inside Inuit island jungle land lava light live look mangrove miles mirages morning mountains moved Napo River neck neo-Darwinism never night Noah North ocean pack ice palo santo trees pass pasture Peary planet play Polar explorers Pole pond priest remember ridges ring Robert Falcon Scott rocks rolled rooster rotifers Santa Claus Saturna Island sea lions ship shore sight silence singing skull slide social Darwinist someone standing stone swans tent thin things tortoise total eclipse valley vanished village walk watch water striders weasel whistling swans wind woods yellow
Beliebte Passagen
Seite 87 - And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.
Seite 70 - Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular — shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands? — but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at...
Seite 129 - twould win me That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome ! those caves of ice ! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware ! Beware ! His flashing eyes, his floating hair ! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Seite 52 - The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake...
Seite 67 - Weasel! I'd never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs' worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside.
Seite 48 - Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified, died, and was buried, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father?
Seite 67 - Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key. Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I...
Seite 52 - On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.
Seite 24 - It was good to be back among people so clever; it was good to have all the world's words at the mind's disposal, so the mind could begin its task. All those things for which we have no words are lost. The mind — the culture — has two little tools, grammar and lexicon: a decorated sand bucket and a matching shovel. With these we bluster about the continents and do all the world's work. With these we try to save our very lives. There are a few more things to tell from this level, the level of the...
Seite 66 - This is, mind you, suburbia. It is a five-minute walk in three directions to rows of houses, though none is visible here. There's a 55 mph highway at one end of the pond, and a nesting pair of wood ducks at the other. Under every bush is a muskrat hole or a beer can. The far end is an alternating series of fields and woods, fields and woods, threaded everywhere with motorcycle tracks — in whose bare clay wild turtles lay eggs. So I had crossed the highway, stepped over two low barbed-wire fences,...