Read Online Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard - Free Book Online
Authors: Annie Dillard
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woods, threaded everywhere with motorcycle tracksâin whose bare clay wild turtles lay eggs.
One evening last week at sunset, I walked to the pond and sat on a downed log near the shore. I was watching the lily pads at my feet tremble and part over the thrusting path of a carp. A yellow warbler appeared to my right and flew behind me. It caught my eye; I swiveled aroundâand the next instant,inexplicably, I was looking down at a weasel, who was looking up at me.
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Weasel! I had never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizardâs; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairsâ worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I did not see, any more than you see a window.
The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild-rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness, twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.
Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we donât. We keep our skulls.
He disappeared. This was only last week, and already I donât remember what shattered the enchantment. I think I blinked, I think I retrieved mybrain from the weaselâs brain, and tried to memorize what I was seeing, and the weasel felt the yank of separation, the careening splashdown into real life and the urgent current of instinct. He vanished under the wild rose. I waited motionless, my mind suddenly full of data and my spirit with pleadings, but he didnât return.
Please do not tell me about âapproach-avoidance conflicts.â I tell you Iâve been in that weaselâs brain for sixty seconds, and he was in mine. Brains are private places, muttering through unique and secret tapesâbut the weasel and I both plugged into another tape simultaneously, for a sweet and shocking time. Can I help it if it was a blank?
What goes on in his brain the rest of the time? What does a weasel think about? He wonât say. His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose-leaf, and blown.
Â
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I donât think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particularâshall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?âbut I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect thatfor me the way is like the weaselâs: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.
Â
I missed my chance. I should have gone for the throat. I should have lunged for that streak of white under the weaselâs chin and held on, held on through mud and into the wild rose, held on for a dearer life. We could live under the wild rose wild as weasels, mute and uncomprehending. I could very calmly go
One evening last week at sunset, I walked to the pond and sat on a downed log near the shore. I was watching the lily pads at my feet tremble and part over the thrusting path of a carp. A yellow warbler appeared to my right and flew behind me. It caught my eye; I swiveled aroundâand the next instant,inexplicably, I was looking down at a weasel, who was looking up at me.
Â
Weasel! I had never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizardâs; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairsâ worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I did not see, any more than you see a window.
The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild-rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness, twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.
Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we donât. We keep our skulls.
He disappeared. This was only last week, and already I donât remember what shattered the enchantment. I think I blinked, I think I retrieved mybrain from the weaselâs brain, and tried to memorize what I was seeing, and the weasel felt the yank of separation, the careening splashdown into real life and the urgent current of instinct. He vanished under the wild rose. I waited motionless, my mind suddenly full of data and my spirit with pleadings, but he didnât return.
Please do not tell me about âapproach-avoidance conflicts.â I tell you Iâve been in that weaselâs brain for sixty seconds, and he was in mine. Brains are private places, muttering through unique and secret tapesâbut the weasel and I both plugged into another tape simultaneously, for a sweet and shocking time. Can I help it if it was a blank?
What goes on in his brain the rest of the time? What does a weasel think about? He wonât say. His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose-leaf, and blown.
Â
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I donât think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particularâshall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?âbut I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect thatfor me the way is like the weaselâs: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.
Â
I missed my chance. I should have gone for the throat. I should have lunged for that streak of white under the weaselâs chin and held on, held on through mud and into the wild rose, held on for a dearer life. We could live under the wild rose wild as weasels, mute and uncomprehending. I could very calmly go
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