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I am a smoke fire
Scared of holy water
Free Account
Created on 2009-05-09 18:45:08 (#319967), last updated 2009-05-12 (841 weeks ago)
2 comments received, 2 comments posted
1 Journal Entry, 0 Tags, 1 Memory, 34 Icons Uploaded
| Name: | Lewis |
|---|---|
| Birthdate: | Jul 31 |
| Location: | Arizona, United States |
We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. Did the wind use to cry, and the hills shout forth praise? Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of earth, and living things say very few. Birds may crank out sweet gibberish and monkeys howl; horses neigh and pigs say, as you recall, oink oink. But so do cobbles rumble when a wave recedes, and thunders break the air in lightning storms. I call these noises silence. it could be that wherever there is motion there is noise, as when a whale breaches and smacks the water - and wherever there is stillness there is still a small voice...
What we have been doing all these centuries but tying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn't us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue....
The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars? There are a thousand million galaxies easily seen in the Palomar reflector; collisions between and among them do, of course, occur. But these collisions are very long and silent slides. Billions of stars sift among each other untouched, too distant even to be moved, heedless as always, hushed.
The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. But God knows I have tried.
Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard
animal rights, annie dillard, anti-peta, arizona, art, arthurian history, astronomy, biology, bioluminescence, body modification, buddhism, camping, cephalopods, cetaceans, corgis, curry, entomology, fantasy creatures, geology, hayao miyazaki, herpetology, hiking, hoarding, hobbits, jethro tull, lord of the rings, marijuana, marine biology, my pets, nintendo ds, ornithology, owls, photography, reading, red bull, terry pratchett, theoretical physics, tolkien, trees, veganism, wanderlust, wildlife conservation, william shakespeare
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