Sublime

I was always amazed, watching grownups, at the way they seemed to know what was to be done in any situation, to know what was the decent thing.

And I just stood there in the fading afternoon light, realizing at seventeen that I was already staring into my past—that the past had a meaning that would always define you.

I saw that I am heading (God willing) to a fat old age where I will have spent only twenty percent of any given day paying attention to life, to being where my feet are. The rest of the time will have been spent in the ticker tape of imaginings, a low-level fear about those I love, and the things I need to buy.

Don’t little children, awakened one morning and told, “Now you’re five!”—don’t they wail at the universe’s descent into chaos? The sun slowly dying, the spiral arm spreading, the molecules drifting apart second by second toward our inevitable heat death—shouldn’t we all wail to the stars?

She wasn’t some little tugboat, drifting along with the tide. She had created herself.

Patty learns that real joy consists of knowing that human wisdom counts less than the shimmer of beeches in a breeze. As certain as weather coming from the west, the things people know for sure will change. There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking.

Annie Dillard has said that day by day you have to give the work before you all the best stuff you have, not saving up for later projects. If you give freely, there will always be more.