Before, we sat and stared out at the trees. Making food and making conversation. Food and shelter, the clothes upon my back, and a reason to spend the day otherwise. Because, as Annie Dillard says, you can’t take it with you. These days like coins dropping through an unseen hole in your pocket, clinking along the pavement and rolling into the gutter. Those days unspent, in rolls packed tight by the merciless crushing machinery around us. To disengage is to appear a failure in the soulless eyes of those watching you. To walk away is to sew that hole up, to turn your pockets inside out in defiance. In dreams I sink my hands into a deep sea of wild minutes and hours, their flashing sides unmarked by the greasy brand of a dollar sign. They swim untamed and free and I slip from the shore into their midst, shake off my rusty shackles and float away into the golden light.
All posts in category writers
involuntary memory
Reading Proust makes me reflect on involuntary memory, a concept that I’m perpetually fascinated by. Something seemingly mundane occurs in your everyday life and that transports you to a certain point in your past; a valve opens without a conscious effort on your part, and a sluice of memories suddenly washes over you. A common trigger for me is certain smells. From these I experience the deepest, most intense recollections. Hearing certain songs or parts of songs sometimes also has this effect. Because I have a memory that approaches the photographic, these recollections are particularly vivid and can even induce a trance-like state. I stop short of calling my memory truly photographic, because my mind has not retained one hundred percent coverage of past events. But I can, either at will or involuntarily, view many specific “scenes” from my past that are painted in the most exquisite detail. For me, involuntary memory is something to indulge in when it occurs, while at the same time exploring its significance on a personal artistic level.
Posted by sean on April 7, 2009
https://sd-stewart.com/2009/04/07/involuntary-memory/
mt zion road
Up in Carroll County there is a road called Mt Zion Road. For as long as I have been biking up in those parts (about 3 years), Mt Zion Road has been closed to thru traffic. There is a detour to follow that involves riding on Dark Hollow Road (scary!) and also includes some unpleasantly brutal hills. I have dutifully followed the detour every time. However, last month my curiosity got the best of me and I turned down Mt Zion Road in order to find out just exactly why a road would be closed for 3 straight years. Well, it turns out that Mt Zion Road is in fact a wonderfully pleasant road! For one thing, there are NO cars on it, which just in itself can make a road wonderful. But it is also beautiful because there are a lot of trees and fields, and only a few houses. It is also a very quiet road. Anyway, I biked on for a couple of miles or so and eventually came to the root of the problem: a small bridge only about 15 feet long or so spanning a tiny country creek. Apparently the bridge can no longer support automotive traffic. There were barricades up on either side of it. However, my bike fit through quite nicely. On the other side, grass had begun growing up through cracks in the pavement. Nature was doing her best to reclaim her rightful land. I lazily rode along a bit farther before stopping to eat a banana in the middle of the road, with tall trees on either side and birds chirping and flying here and there. I thought about how much I love abandoned roads. I also wondered if the residents were opposed to the bridge being repaired. When functional, I am sure it’s a well-used road due to its location. However, if I lived on Mt Zion Road, I’d be hoping for that bridge to be busted forever. Just the other day I rode down there again. A goldfinch led the way, and I later stopped to greet a couple of burros. They seemed quite interested in me, although they got skittish when I tried to approach the fence. So I rode on and later stopped after crossing the bridge, ate a Clif bar, and absorbed the silence and the visual beauty of a creek winding through verdant fields.
That’s all for today, but before I sign off I wanted to commemorate the passing of a literary giant. You were one of the greats, Aleksandr. Best wishes on the next leg of your journey.
Posted by sean on August 3, 2008
https://sd-stewart.com/2008/08/03/mt-zion-road/
thomas merton
I have always held a certain fascination with monks. At various times in my life, I’ve wondered if I should enter a monastery. A life of seclusion, contemplation, freedom from the burdens of modern society: it all sounds good to me. Of course, I’m not too keen on the abstinence thing, but I suppose it wouldn’t be such a special way of life if some sacrifices weren’t made. Lately I have been reading some of Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s writings and very much enjoying them. I just wanted to share a couple of quotes that resonated with me. I think Thomas and I would’ve had a few things to talk about, had we ever met.
“Technology has its own ethic of expediency and efficiency. What can be done efficiently must be done in the most efficient way—even if what is done happens, for example, to be genocide or the devastation of a country by total war. Even the long-term interests of society, or the basic needs of man himself, are not considered when they get in the way of technology. We waste natural resources, as well as those of undeveloped countries, iron, oil, etc., in order to fill our cities and roads with a congestion of traffic that is in fact largely useless, and is a symptom of the meaningless and futile agitation of our own minds.”
“The attachment of the modern American to his automobile, and the symbolic role played by his car, with its aggressive and lubric design, its useless power, its otiose gadgetry, its consumption of fuel, which is advertised as having almost supernatural power…this is where the study of American mythology should begin.
Meditation on the automobile, what it is used for, what it stands for—the automobile as weapon, as self-advertisement, as brothel, as a means of suicide, etc.—might lead us at once into the heart of all contemporary American problems: race, war, the crisis of marriage, the flight from reality into myth and fanaticism, the growing brutality and irrationality of American mores.”
Posted by sean on May 19, 2008
https://sd-stewart.com/2008/05/19/thomas-merton/
annie dillard
>My appreciation of Ms. Dillard has swelled again, this time to only mildly obsessive proportions. Having scoured her self-maintained website and been left hungering for more, I happened upon this site, which nicely collects much of what the World Wide Web has to offer on the subject of Annie Dillard. What I found both pleased and disturbed me. Most disappointing was to read that Annie has basically declared herself retired following the publication of The Maytrees: no more books and no more public appearances (she had been faithfully doing two public readings per year for quite some time). So I guess I won’t ever get to see her read in person, which is a little upsetting. However, I did find some links to recordings of her readings, which I will need to parse out over time in order to keep me satisfied. I guess that I will also need to slow down on plowing through her back catalog now that I know no new books will be forthcoming. Regrettably, I have already read much of it.
Posted by sean on March 29, 2008
https://sd-stewart.com/2008/03/29/annie-dillard/
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