I, the Pilgrim

I am currently reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard is famous for dwelling on the natural experiences of life and spinning deep and profound philosophy and theology from them. However, though she is cerebral, as  any writer tends to be, she chooses to throw herself back into the real, into the world. She does not remain in the mind, and I cannot help but admire that. It strikes me as extraordinarily practical and boldly imaginative at the same time.

"All right, then. Pull yourself together. Is this where I'm spending my life, in the "reptile brain," this lamp at the top of the spine like a lighthouse flipping mad beams indiscriminately into the darkness, into the furred thoraxes of moths, onto the backs of leaping fishes and the wrecks of schooners? Come up a level; surface."

- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek