Tinker Creek

I know our blog on the Annie Dillard piece is for the first six chapters, but I listened to the audio book at the beginning of the semester and at this point I can’t remember what was what or when was when.

If I remember correctly, it doesn’t matter.  I don’t remember the book actually having a plot, just bunches of observations poetically shared.

As the book started, I took a deep breath and relaxed.  The prose was beautifully descriptive.  I loved, loved, loved it!!!  As I listened, I could actually see the woods Annie was tromping through, heard the chirping birds, and inhaled the fragrant scents of the forest.  Perhaps that’s a bit dangerous to be so distracted as I drive up and down the canyon, but all ended well.

Listening to a book is SUCH a different experience than reading a book.  There’s no skimming the paragraphs or skipping pages.  Every word floats past your ears and into your brain.  The person reading the book makes or breaks the book.  There’s been books I don’t think I would have enjoyed reading, but the reader was a performer who brought the characters to life to such an extent that I fell in love with them.  

One of my friends prefers reading books so his imagination is not impaired.  Audio books are the best of both worlds.  I use my imagination for the visuals but the essence of the character is enhanced by the actor reading the book.  I just finished Middlesex today.  I absolutely wouldn’t have read the book, but the actor brought such life to the characters, affecting the accents perfectly, that I ended up loving the book.  

The first time I listened to a scary book was intense.  I couldn’t just flip the pages quickly to get past the gruesome parts.  Every syllable I had to listen to.  I pick those books carefully.  Stephen King’s Duma Key is incredibly performed.  I can still hear that man’s voice in my head sometimes.  That was three years ago.  

Listening to books has another perk.  Sometimes a phrase is uttered and my jaw drops.  The combination of words is PERFECT!  My entire being becomes engaged in the phrase.  Dean Koontz’s Innocence is that way.  I would listen to some of the sections over and over in utter appreciation of the brilliance.

Well, I haven’t written much about Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  There’s a reason for that.  If I write what I remember in this blog, I won’t have anything to say for the next one.  So, please forgive my digression. I’ll share what I ultimately thought next time.

chaos?

“Creation Revisited” by Peter Atkins depressed me.  I have, of course, heard about entropy, chaos, and chance in my science courses.  But, those ideas have never been presented in such a way as to posit that evolution and consciousness are a result of the chaos.   That seems counter intuitive to me.  Evolution is generally perceived as becoming more complicated which I intuitively think means less chaotic.  

“The only constant thing in the universe is change.”   It’s a cliché that we have heard all our lives.  Now, I read there wouldn’t even be a universe without chaos.  I am struggling with these concepts.  I can understand how some form of chaos triggered the Big Bang.  But, then all that energy that was expelled eventually gelled into universes, galaxies, stars, planets and us.  That gelling and congregating of matter is a result of the universe becoming more chaotic?  We are what we are because the system is decaying?

Although I am not religious, I must still hold on to some anthropomorphic ideal that there is some order to the universe, some reason.  Yet, Peter Atkins tells me that it is continual degradation that spawned intelligent life.  The motiveless, purposeless universe just bounced around until a motivated entity that seeks purpose was generated.  There’s no reason why one change occurs instead of another.  

I don’t know.  I’m a bit depressed by it all.  I guess I’m just glad motiveless molecules jostled around enough for me to be on the planet. 

But, is it really that simple?  What makes us all who we are?  Smart or not?  Violent or not?  Beautiful or not?  Driven or not?  Are we are who we are just because of the roll of the dice, or jostle of the molecule?