Annie Dillard on Living

In honor of Annie Dillard’s death last week, here’s a classic passage from A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 — here laid out as a poem for your reading pleasure:

Thomas Merton wrote,
“there is always a temptation
to diddle around
in the contemplative life,
making itsy-bitsy statues.”

There is always an enormous
temptation in all of life
to diddle around
making itsy-bitsy friends
and meals and journeys
for itsy-bitsy years on end.
It is so self-conscious,
so apparently moral,
simply to step aside from the gaps
where the creeks and winds pour down,
saying, I never merited this grace,
quite rightly, and then to sulk along
the rest of your days
on the edge of rage.

I won’t have it. The world
is wilder than that in all directions,
more dangerous and bitter,
more extravagant and bright.
We are making hay
when we should be making
whoopee; we are raising tomatoes
when we should be raising Cain,
or Lazarus.

Go up into the gaps.
If you can find them; they shift
and vanish too. Stalk the gaps.
Squeak into a gap in the soil,
turn, and unlock — more
than a maple — a universe.
This is how you spend
this afternoon, and tomorrow
morning, and tomorrow afternoon.

Spend the afternoon.
You can’t take it with you.

+ Annie Dillard