Just Rambling

In Pilgrim At Tinker Creek Annie Dillard writes:

Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies. It is the glimpse of oneself in a storefront window, the unbidden awareness of reactions on the faces of other people -- the novelist's world, not the poet's. I've lived there. I remember what the city has to offer: human companionship, major-league baseball, and a clatter of quickening stimulus like a rush from strong drugs that leaves you drained. I remember how you bide your time in the city, and think, if you stop to think, "next year . . . I'll start living; next year . . . I'll start my life." Innocence is a better world.

Innocence sees that this is it, and finds it world enough, and time.

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I was fortunate enough to have someone recommend Pilgrim to me and now I recommend it to others. The quote above is from the chapter "The Present," which is about experiencing the present purely.

I've read Ayn Rand and enjoyed her novels. But, when someone gets all excited about Rand's philosophy, I tell them I prefer Dillard's.