“You have to stalk the spirit, too. You can wait forgetful anywhere, for anywhere is the way of his fleet passage, and hope to catch him by the tail and shout something in his ear before he wrestles away. Or you can pursue him whenever you dare, risking the shrunken sinew in the hollow of the thigh; you can bang at the door all night till the innkeeper relents, if he ever relents;......”
“I sit on a bridge as [Moses] on Pisgah or Sinai, and I am both waiting becalmed in a clift of the rock and banging with all my will, calling like a child beating on a door: Come on out!........I know you’re there!” “And then occasionally the mountains part...” “When Moses came down from the cliff in Mount Sinai, the people were afraid of him: the very skin on his face shone.”* I think everyone knows this yearning.....to be burnt alive; no, to be alive, burning.
[from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard; one of my favorite books.]
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