Book Review
chris is reviewing the book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property by lewis hyde, over at parking lot. here's a taste from the book itself:
comments:
cool, i have to jump over to parking lot next. way back in 1985 i had the chance to attend the sitka summer writer's symposium. the faculty that june included robert hass, margaret atwood, barry lopez. it was margaret atwood who held up a copy of The Gift, which had just come out, and said, read this book, people. i did, & loved it, all those years ago...
my brother just sent me a copy of derrick jensen's book Walking on Water: Reading, Wriring, and Revolution. this morning i flipped it open and read a chapter called Love. how amazing, when people have the gift of returning us, of reminding us of the path to circle back to our full selves.
chris weaver | Email | 07.21.04 - 5:09 am | #
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that book sounds delicious also, chris:
"This is Jensen's great gift as a teacher and writer, to bring us fully alive at the same moment he is making us confront our losses and count our defeats. ...a lesson on how to connect to the core of our creative selves, to the miracle of waking up and arriving breathless (but with dry feet) on the far shore." www.derrickjensen.org
and andy goldsworthy on the cover... a man after my own heart!
ashley | Email | Homepage | 07.21.04 - 5:50 pm | #
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Ah yes Chris...I have the Sitka Reader "From the Island's Edge" in my hands at the moment. it contains one of my favourite essays ever, by Barry Lopez called Landscape and Narrative.
Lucky you to have been there.
Chris Corrigan | Email | Homepage | 07.23.04 - 7:20 pm | #
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hey chris!
it was marvelous. each year when i receive the brochure for the next symposium in the mail i drool, but i've never made it back. carolyn servid, who i think is still organizing the symposium each june, has done an amazing job including indigenous writers on the faculty. at the '85 event i was 21 and to save money i slept in my tent in the rainy forest near sheldon jackson college, where the event is held. barry lopez was still in the middle of writing arctic dreams, and he spent a lot of time telling stories about listening to inuit elders talk about animals...polar bears who walk upside down on the underside of sea ice...& polar bears who, when hunting, will sprint toward a seal on the ice, dive into a slide, and, knowing that its nose is the only point of black in the whole snowy world, will cover its nose with its paw to ensure that the seal doesn't see anything until the moment of impact. imagine that.
love,
chris weaver | Email | 07.25.04 - 1:31 am | #
The gift moves towards the empty place. As it turns in its circle, it turns towards him who has been empty handed the longest and if someone appears whose need is greater it leaves its old channel and moves towards him. Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us. Societal nature abhors a vacuum. Counsels Meister Eckhart the mystic: "Let us borrow empty vessels." The gift finds that man attractive who stands with an empty bowl he does not own.
comments:
cool, i have to jump over to parking lot next. way back in 1985 i had the chance to attend the sitka summer writer's symposium. the faculty that june included robert hass, margaret atwood, barry lopez. it was margaret atwood who held up a copy of The Gift, which had just come out, and said, read this book, people. i did, & loved it, all those years ago...
my brother just sent me a copy of derrick jensen's book Walking on Water: Reading, Wriring, and Revolution. this morning i flipped it open and read a chapter called Love. how amazing, when people have the gift of returning us, of reminding us of the path to circle back to our full selves.
chris weaver | Email | 07.21.04 - 5:09 am | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
that book sounds delicious also, chris:
"This is Jensen's great gift as a teacher and writer, to bring us fully alive at the same moment he is making us confront our losses and count our defeats. ...a lesson on how to connect to the core of our creative selves, to the miracle of waking up and arriving breathless (but with dry feet) on the far shore." www.derrickjensen.org
and andy goldsworthy on the cover... a man after my own heart!
ashley | Email | Homepage | 07.21.04 - 5:50 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah yes Chris...I have the Sitka Reader "From the Island's Edge" in my hands at the moment. it contains one of my favourite essays ever, by Barry Lopez called Landscape and Narrative.
Lucky you to have been there.
Chris Corrigan | Email | Homepage | 07.23.04 - 7:20 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
hey chris!
it was marvelous. each year when i receive the brochure for the next symposium in the mail i drool, but i've never made it back. carolyn servid, who i think is still organizing the symposium each june, has done an amazing job including indigenous writers on the faculty. at the '85 event i was 21 and to save money i slept in my tent in the rainy forest near sheldon jackson college, where the event is held. barry lopez was still in the middle of writing arctic dreams, and he spent a lot of time telling stories about listening to inuit elders talk about animals...polar bears who walk upside down on the underside of sea ice...& polar bears who, when hunting, will sprint toward a seal on the ice, dive into a slide, and, knowing that its nose is the only point of black in the whole snowy world, will cover its nose with its paw to ensure that the seal doesn't see anything until the moment of impact. imagine that.
love,
chris weaver | Email | 07.25.04 - 1:31 am | #
