We try but we don't belong

I’m having a hard time getting through Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek”. It’s a good read, very descriptive, but I don’t think it’s my style.

The entire book is about Annie living in Tinker’s Creek and taking in the nature around her. She talks about egg casings, bull frogs, spider’s that spin webs, and the passing of the seasons. I’m all about nature, mind you, but I am having a hard time figuring out how this novel won a Pulitzer Prize in literature. I would have given the prize to her other work “Holy the Firm” instead.

The book speaks of human conditioning and our relationship with the Divine. I must admit her prose does wrap you up in the event. Every time I pick up the novel, it takes some time me to get into it, but once I do, I am deeply involved and taken on a journey. And, the references to physics, literature, numerous religious traditions, anthropology, medicine and folklore are astounding.

The book itself was indirectly influenced by a near fatal attack of pneumonia which she was stricken with in 1971. After she recovered, Annie decided she needed to experience life more fully. It’s debatable whether or not spending four seasons in a creek would be “living more”. Life is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

I had a Tinker’s Creek when I was younger. It was my sanctuary, a place I could go and see the world for what it is, without the confusion of cities, commercialism, crowds; it was my sanity at times. As I get older, I want it again, but I feel the draw of urban life and am conflicted.

I wish there were balance. I wish a city planner like Jane Jacobs could make my dream a reality. Jane is now dead, and a lot of her ideas will be rendered useless, because Mrs. Jacob’s was the driving force and we are a world without leaders now. Our leaders are greedy and power hungry.

“There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served”

–-Jane Jacobs

"But look what we have built low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities."

-- Jane Jacobs

I miss her...