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the Abundance by Annie Dillard — a Book Summary by mary grace allerdice
Seeing, making + trusting the world. These are 3 themes that stood out to me the most while reading Annie Dillard’s essay collection, The Abundance. I will walk you through my summary of some of the most compelling quotes, ideas and prompts from this stunning compilation.
“There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.” — Annie Dillard
we discuss —
- the structure of the Abundance by Annie Dillard
- Theme #1 — Seeing, sensing or paying attention to the world
- Theme #2 — Embodying that attention by creating
- Theme #3 — the World is beautiful… trust the world
NOTE : for the first theme I discuss “seeing” a lot, and the kind of “seeing” i’m talking about is more of an awareness, attention and a presence. This kind of “seeing” is not dependent on actual, physical sight.
LINKS
If you enjoyed the episode, check out —
Episode on Healthy Attachment to Creative Callings
Check out the book!
The Abundance, book by Annie Dillard
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Music. My name is Mary Grace and you're listening to the homebody podcast. Here we explore embodiment as Interstellar beings practicing how to live more fully as creatures of both the stars and the Earth. These spiritually and artfully minded conversations intersect astrology creative practices intuition magic healing. Poetry and a deep love for the natural world. My hope is to enliven you so we can co-create possible regenerative Futures to encourage you so together we can become Dynamic agents of beauty. Fully awake with our power intact. Let us be intentional as we approach the creation and caretaking of life and let's make room for inquiry sensitivity and joy. Thank you for listening. Just recently that though I was familiar with any Dillard's work and even some popular quotes of hers that I hadn't actually sat down to read her work. So a few months ago I sat down with the abundance which is a collection of essays both new and old by this Pulitzer prize-winning author. The abundance to me felt like walking through different rooms mirrors lenses of this author's view of the world and its interconnections I felt like each essay like I was spying into her sight her research and sort of lying down inside the intersections of her thoughts I found her work is very generous while at the same time maintaining a sharpness that is accurate for a lot of our experiences of life the essays don't try to be optimistic or make you feel better about things that are difficult or hard to look at but neither does it add more do more harshness than is truly reflective of the situation. I rarely have the sense that Annie Dillard was trying to make me feel a certain way or like convince me of a particular thing she was simply trying to show me there was no agenda it was simply showing and the essays feel very sensitive sensing but never too much never indulgent in any way and in that they display a great skill in my opinion whether it was a particular essay that I was my favorite or I felt really sucked into or not I felt like I was sitting down Through The Eyes of. Master and that in and of itself was worth the journey for me. So there's three main themes that really stood out the loudest to me from the collection and I'm going to summarize them here the First theme that arose really loudly for me was looking or a seeing truly seeing the world that is with you and around you is a skill that fewer and fewer people are practicing nowadays we react to notifications and dings interruptions as opposed to actively being present with the world as it is with our full embodied senses are seeing. And while this theme comes to the surface in a very obvious way in a couple of essays I would say that simply the way Annie Dillard rights is a reflection of this ability to be with the world through seeing and paying attention her work makes that clear that this is someone who is seeing in a similar way to thinking about Mary Oliver and Mary Oliver is writing for instance it's cleared this is someone who knows how to be outside knows how to be with the world and with themselves. In this is a question that I'm very interested in in my life. But also an ongoing question with creating and writing is can I craft as someone who sees as a Seer and I would say that Annie Dillard does that and we can see evidence of this and so many ways throughout the collection. In seeing there is an invitation to really like be here to be present to the life that's happening right now to just really be here for it though you can't see everything see everything that is here and seeing is being here she tells the reader to admire the world for never ending on you as you would admire an opponent without taking your eyes from him or walking away. Later on she describes this moment that she saw a Mockingbird Korean straight down from a four-story building towards the ground and she says just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground unfurled his wings with exact deliberate care reveling the broad bars of white spread his elegant white banded tail and so floated onto the grass I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step off the gutter caught my eye there was no one else in sight the fact of his Free Fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be I think that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will sense them the least we can do is try to be there. Trying to be there and being here by seeing what is happening because grace and beauty are happening so you know probably not on the phone as we like zombie down the sidewalk right that person's going to miss it because they're not looking And so there's this reminder that life is less about being productive at every second and more about being present and watching the world admiring it for still being with us. Another element of seeing is Simplicity the willingness to be more easily and awe and that Simplicity is a gateway or a lens through which we see the abundance of the world around us and returning to wonder and awareness that much of what life is doing is pure aw if we can see with enough Simplicity she writes it is dire poverty indeed when a man is so hungry and tired but he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty in simplicity so that finding a penny will literally make your day then since the world is in fact planted in pennies you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple what you see is what you get. I love reframing this phrase that we say so often what you see is what you get if you we could see the world full of shining pennies then you see shining pennies everywhere. What you see is what you get and if you have cultivated the openness to be alive to that than you will see it. Reminds us that the power of perspective and how it is that we receive what we see with what Spirit or attitude we see the world around us very much determines what we think we are getting and how much we get it's an interesting prompts to cultivate enough poverty or Simplicity in our self I think I like the word Simplicity better than poverty in order to see abundance at every turn and maybe that is a true perspective of abundance that it's already here and what you see is what you get. She talks later about nature as a very much now you see it now you don't affair. She continues a fish flashes then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt dear apparently ascended bodily into heaven the brightest Oriole Fades into leaves these disappearances stunned me into silence and concentration they say of nature that it conceals with a grand nonchalance and they say a vision that it is a deliberate gift. The revelation of a dancer who for my eyes only flings away her seven veils for nature does reveal as well as concealed now you don't see it now you do. The other component of seeing is loving she speaks about who can see and when she does that she says the lover can see and the knowledgeable. And this line really made me stop close the book soak it in for a moment because at first I was like I don't understand and then it really started to seep in I think I was reading too fast the lover can see and the knowledgeable. The dominant ways that my culture interacts with information attention tends to mostly prioritize the knowledgeable site and there's nothing wrong with knowledge but this pause and this line the lover can see and the knowledgeable it reminds us that loving something is also its own site its own special. Revelation of what we see when we watch something or we see someone Through The Eyes Of Love or as a being we love a place we love being alive that we love sure there's biased there but love is also site and we can only really see from where we are so there is no objective Omni awareness that we have as humans our knowledge is also biased right we can only truly see things from where we are from how we are who we are and I think it would behoove us to lean into the site that long that love brings into our vision and how that is an equally valuable way of knowing equally valuable way of seeing. A reminder that you don't have to have a degree in something in order to truly see and understand it that knowledge doesn't have to exclude you and that love can grant the same access to site she writes as for what I do see a nightmare network of ganglia charged in firing without my knowledge cuts and splices it editing it for my brain. Donald E car points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain. This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is. So are more complex brains and ganglion systems edit and splice what we're seeing and create something much simpler that we interpret through our senses whereas these one-celled creatures are not getting that edited nasarah seeing really the whole thing again a reminder of the simplicity. A flag back to that Simplicity she also says say you have seen an ordinary bit of what is real. The infinite fabric of time that eternity shoots through and times soft-skinned people working and dying under slowly shipping Stars. Then what which leads us to the second dominant theme of the book from my perspective and if we can see with Simplicity and with loving and with presence then what then we make making is the second theme that I really saw the abundance of the world that we see when we truly see. Then we do something with it and we make. And the middle of the book there's an essay on the writing life a writer in the world and her advice about writing might as well be advice about living and it really lights up the middle of the collection she says one of the few things I know about writing is this spend it all shoot it play it lose it all right away every time. Don't hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book give it give it all give it now the very impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now something more will arise for later something better these things Phil from behind from beneath like well water similarly the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful it is destructive anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you you open your safe and find ashes. Maybe we are here to make things with what we see. From what we see and maybe that is an abundant life to embody the making are making which is how we inhabit what we see maybe that's making something as difficult impossible or beautiful as a church knife which he talks about or making something as difficult and possible or beautiful as a meaningful life of abundant presence she says the thing is to stock your calling in a certain skilled and supple way to locate the most tender and live spots and plug into that pulse this is yielding not fighting yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of a single necessity. Here's some more advice that sounds a lot like invite them here are some more advice on writing that sounds a lot like advice on living she says there's something you find interesting for a reason hard to explain because you have never read it on any page. There you begin you were made and set here to give voice to this your own astonishment. On the next page she says write as if you were dying at the same time assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients that is after all the case what would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon what would you say to a dying person that would not in Rage by its triviality for fun we could exchange the word living for writing which would read like this live as if you were dying. At the same time assume you live for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients that is after all the case what would you begin living if you knew you would die soon. What could you say to a dying person that would not in Rage by its triple triviality. I think that is an embodied making because remember we are seeing here in this chapter about writing I really loved the description of art entering the body or the medium entering the body the basically the body has to learn the tools of the medium it is using. As a dancer of course this makes a lot of sense to me and feels very true but she describes it in one paragraph through painting she says in working-class France when an apprentice got hurt or when he got tired the experienced worker said is the trade entering his body the art must enter the body a painter cannot use paints like glue or screws to fasten the world the tubes of painter like fingers they work only if inside the painter the neural pathways are wide and clear to the brain cell by cell molecule by molecule atom by atom part of the brain changes physical shape to fit the paint. Embody the making let to the making the tools the media change you be the making and that you are here to make your calling you are here to make on some level we can't help it but we can help what and how we are seeing we can become more conscious of how we embody the medium and what we're making with it. She also says we could you know we can live any way we want. It's a reminder that you know we're not here to obey our lives but to make our lives and the fewer rules we have the more choices we have but how many of us are choosing like artists with calling some makers with embodied mediums how many of us are approaching each day as if it were our masterpiece giving voice to the astonishment that we see in the world from where we are the astonishment of both the good the bad the ugly the Beautiful the grace the cosmic the mundane later in the book she writes even the purest metaphysical Taoist thinkers the Lumen Dallas say that people can assist in improving the Divine handiwork or as a modern Taoist puts it people may follow the will of the Creator in guiding the world and its Evolution towards the Ultimate Reality. It reminds me of Octavia Butler and she says we do not worship God we perceive and attend God. We learn from God with forethought and work we shape God. This brings me to our third and final meta thread which to me stood out of the collection is really just an astonishment of the world or the beauty of the world. And because of that we should trust the world so to smash some different quotes together that the world is lighting up at once beautiful and terrible but do not part with it the world is alive beings everywhere she writes I think that the dying pray at the last not please but thank you as a guest thanks his host at the door falling from airplanes that people are crying thank you thank you all down the air and the cold carriages draw up for them on the rocks. Divinity is not playful the universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. Let's buy a power that is unfathomably secret and holy and Fleet there is nothing to be done about it but ignore it or see. And then you walk fearlessly eating what you must growing wherever you can like the Monk on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is who takes no Comfort among death forgetting men and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burned nor warms him but with which he will not part. Later in an essay called for the time being which was one of my favorites in the collection she quotes a French paleontologist from the early 1900's a tell you are who said throughout my whole life during every minute of it the world has been gradually lighting up in blazing before my eyes until it has come to surround me entirely lit up from within. And I feel like that's such an expression of what we were talking earlier about being the lover who sees right such Wonder arises. When we are a lover who sees the same man who was also a priest is quoted saying if I should lose faith in God I think I should continue to believe invincibly in the world. And Purity does not live in a separation from the universe but in a deeper penetration of it. So this invitation to see and to belong to this astonishing live coal of the world this fits with a more well-known quote of hers as well from an essay called Pilgrim the Waters of separation and it harks back to this advice of earlier on writing and living in bodying are making which is to spend it all and do it while it's here when it's here now. She writes there is always an enormous it Temptation and 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 wins poor down saying I have never merited this grace quite rightly and then to sulk along for 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 are Lazarus. So I hope this invites you to really step more fully into you're seeing the world with your presence and with your love from the place where you are and from Who You Are. To embody your making as an expression of this site as an expression of seeing and experiencing an abundant world or if she says in this last quote something that is dangerous and bitter but also extravagant and bright and that from there we can really stand in this place of an astonishing beauty of the world that is all these things that we can't part with even though we don't want to and that we could offer more that is like that Cole that we won't part with this vision of vastness that we can't really separate from us and the hell that could potentially Propel us forward with us that Spirit of thank you thank you thank you. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode please leave us a 5-star review subscribe to the show and share the episode. Check out the links below to learn more about things we talked about and find free resources if you'd like to continue the conversation please join us inside of the home body portal. A free online community where you can talk more about the episode learn with us and connect with others. Let us be in service to life with courage creativity and connection thank you for being here be well peace. Music.