#anniedillard — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #anniedillard, aggregated by home.social.
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I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell? "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?"
-- Annie Dillard -
Do not hoard ideas
Holding on to a lot of ideas takes a great deal of time and energy. If, like me, you’re a systems person you can make things much worse. I can build personal knowledge systems, slipboxes, databases, custom software and bend all sorts of technology into new shapes. It turns out—as I hope you’ve already guessed—that if you have too many ideas, and then build and deploy a bunch of clever tools and systems, you just end up with even more ideas. (There isn’t quite an XKCD for that, but number 927 is close.)
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. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The 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 fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.
~ Annie Dillard from, Spend it all every time
slip:4usupe3.
Building tools and systems is also a terrific way to hide. It’s a variation of the old idea that I cannot start on the real work until I get all this other stuff organized and cleaned up and set up and just so.
Instead, I’m so much happier if I simply take something that brings me joy, and share it.
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#AnnieDillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: #Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another #mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as #beauty, a #grace wholly #gratuitous.
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The 2005 #Smog song "Say Valley Maker" marks many changes in the life of #BillCallahan as he uses the river as the central symbol to demonstrate "everyday transcendence." The song creates new language from natural and supernatural phenomenon as the only way to describe the need for love and connection. The post also looks at "Rock Bottom Riser" along with ample #LarryMcMurtry and #AnnieDillard references. All this and more in the latest Recliner Notes post:
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The 2005 #Smog song "Say Valley Maker" marks many changes in the life of #BillCallahan as he uses the river as the central symbol to demonstrate "everyday transcendence." The song creates new language from natural and supernatural phenomenon as the only way to describe the need for love and connection. The post also looks at "Rock Bottom Riser" along with ample #LarryMcMurtry and #AnnieDillard references. All this and more in the latest Recliner Notes post:
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The 2005 #Smog song "Say Valley Maker" marks many changes in the life of #BillCallahan as he uses the river as the central symbol to demonstrate "everyday transcendence." The song creates new language from natural and supernatural phenomenon as the only way to describe the need for love and connection. The post also looks at "Rock Bottom Riser" along with ample #LarryMcMurtry and #AnnieDillard references. All this and more in the latest Recliner Notes post: