Teaching A Stone To Talk By: Annie Dillard

Teaching A Stone To Talk, by Annie Dillard, is interesting and as you read it you keep wondering, where is this going? Are the stories she's relating connected or are they just a loose collection of memories and facts, and then- bang - the end impacts you like a great slap of reality.I liked this book a lot. Its a truly thought provoking piece of non-fiction, poetically written. Ms. Dillard spends a lot of time pointing out how pointless many things we humans do are. Nature, she feels, is much simpler, it just is. I started reading this book and got quickly lost in her metaphors. I had to start over. Then I realized this book is profound, full of naturalist's information, which I really loved, like how mangrove tree leaves extrude salt. Its full of questions, doubts, observances, recollections, and facts. Its hysterical in parts, depressing in others, and highly spiritual all at the same time. I don't think this book is for the type of reader that is looking for a light easy read. Nor is it for the person who looks to read into each thing to find the deeper truth. This book, like many of Dillard's observances - just is - and thats how it has to be read. With an open mind willing to explore the world as it is - and not miss it.

So, what is the 'stone' and can it talk? I have two theories. First I thought the stone was us -people. That we get so caught up in the trappings of the world we forget to look and be part of it. We don't see what is important. Like when the priests and pastors at an ecumenical service are all fumbling around looking for the host. They whispered, "do you have it?" Which of course everybody could hear through their microphones. Ms. Dillard stages this whole fiasco on an ice flow in the Arctic. Or, also on an ice flow, the Baptism of Oswaldo,when everyone was so worried about clothes and pictures and the little lump of a child is just there sort of unnoticed. They didn't see the importance of the event just the trappings. This is theory one, that we as stones must learn to look at and see this world we pass through and learn how to live and adapt to it. We have to learn to 'talk'. By way of example, Dillard talks about several British Polar expeditions and how truly ridiculous they were. Here these people were going to explore the Arctic Circle to find a passage through it, map and explore, and locate the exact North Pole, and what they took with them was outrageous. They took china, crystal, full tea service, silver ware - the officer's silver ware of course engraved with their name and family coat of arms, a 1,200 volume library, backgammon, and so on. However, for this three to four year journey due North they took only twelve days of coal, and no warm clothing. Through their stupidity and lack of experience, of course they were absolutely unsuccessful. Several expeditions after the first made the same mistakes. One voyage kept the crew's moral up by having plays out on the pack ice. Why not? They weren't going anywhere. Others printed weekly news papers (they brought printing presses). I can just see the headlines: "Still Caught in the Pack Ice. Starving, Cold, and Dieing Again Today." Great read. Obviously stubborn, resistant, hard headed stones that they were, not learning or adapting to that harsh environment all died.

Theory number two:, that the Earth is the 'stone' that is silent, as Ms. Dillard says, but that silence speaks volumes about the Earth, made of rock, and how it changes over time. She likens people to Mangrove trees. How as seeds they begin with nothing. The seeds fall into a blob of mud in the water and grow and sort of float on that blob where ever it may go. Sometimes out into the ocean bound for who knows where. The young trees bob and pitch, some die, some crash into other trees. As they grow they are so full of life with birds in their branches and all kinds of creatures living about their roots. The Mangroves are like a whole universe that drift along in space. Interesting metaphor.

Ms. Dillard reflects on her travels, experiences, and events. Like going to the Galapagos Islands and experiencing the animals there who with no fear of people love to come visit and communicate and play for awhile. How these animals just are. They accept their environment, they are part of it and it is a part of them. They just live. Some day I want so much to go to the Galapagos. She relates her experience of going to see a total eclipse of the sun and how even though in modern times people know exactly what to expect the people screamed in fear, as did she. Her reaction to the eclipse was like this hallucinogenic panic attack. How primitive, and then when the sun reemerged she went to lunch!

In "Teaching a Stone to Talk," Dillard talks a lot about science and relates a lot of interesting facts. For example, when you're at the absolute North Pole if you took a photo of the night sky the stars would look arranged in a perfect circular pattern of concentric rings. I'd love to see that. This book is also a commentary on life and how we should absolutely "see whats there," and live as part of the world and not outside of it. Ms. Dillard relates a great story in chapter one about a weasel that really intrigued me because I'm very interested in interspecies communication. She was sitting quietly in the woods when this weasel popped out from under a bush. He was so startled to see her and she was so startled to see him that their eyes locked and as she puts it, "...I [was] in that weasel's brain for sixty seconds"(14). She saw that the weasel just is. He does what a weasels supposed to do. He hunts, he kills, he eats, and goes on. He doesn't have great thoughts perhaps, who knows- the weasel may think the same of Ms. Dillard, he lives by instinct. Ms. Dillard thinks maybe we should live more like he does. He lives as he is meant to. The weasel yields to life he doesn't fight it. Ms. Dillard points out that we live outside of the environment. We can live anywhere and we don't have to adapt to that place. We adapt that place to us. One interesting point (of many), that Ms. Dillard makes is that nature is silent. That we should look at it. The world was originally just rock-stone- and says nothing. "Nature's silence is just one remark, and every flake of the world is a chip off that old mute block"(69). It is suggested that someone should carve a little mouth on the stone so that we might teach it to talk. Would we understand?

This book is also about experiencing spirituality. Ms. Dillard said that in the Bible God spoke to the people and they were so frightened they asked God not to speak to them. So He stopped. Now after all this time, she asks, how do we get God to speak to us, the stones, again? Would we listen? Ms. Dillard says we run away from spirituality because we are afraid. She wrote a great line, "... Once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds and we were all afraid"(141). She realized how little of God's love she understood and then she ran back to Him. I feel God does speak and that nature is not silent. The sounds of life are like this great symphony. We must choose what we will do. That makes our life infinitely more difficult than a weasel's. If we choose to listen we will hear. If we watch the world we'll experience it. "It is the blended note of ten thousand things"(69). We are journeyers through this life on this planet Ms. Dillard remarks. She wonders where do we belong? Life passes. We think as children we have all the time in the world - to much time. Then as a bell curves all of a sudden we realize time is passing too fast and we are sliding down the other side of the curve... So, to me Ms. Dillard's most important message is this- experience life to the fullest. Be part of nature. Simpler. Notice what is around you because life passes and you can't go back. Our lives are short. The seasons change and pass- don't miss any of it.

Keep Reading, Devon