This Fathom-High Body

I lay low:There are (I think) no films of me, no TV appear­ances. For any ques­tions about my stuff, refer to the texts them­selves. — Annie Dillard

There are, how­ever, record­ings of her voice. Her dis­ap­point­ingly nasal drone has been cap­tured at mul­ti­ple pub­lic speak­ing engage­ments. I am lis­ten­ing to her read a trans­la­tion of the Bud­dha: “In truth I say to you that within this fathom-high body lies the world and the ris­ing of the world and the ceas­ing of the world.” I am think­ing of how Annie was first deliv­ered to me on the page; how each printed word resem­bled, to me, a deer’s hoof print; how her voice was the thud and clack of a type­writer in my head.

I am forc­ing myself to lis­ten to her lec­ture, try­ing to ignore her cur­rency. I am try­ing not to pic­ture her hus­band and child while she men­tions them. I am imag­in­ing her face, eyes blinded by the stage lights, and not the enthu­si­as­tic audi­ence. Hav­ing already evoked them, this is, of course, impos­si­ble. The audi­ence, her smoker’s rasp, the words of the Buddha–she has come light years from the young poet who stalked a muskrat just to stare it in the eye. Or, more likely, this is who she’s always been.

Why am I dis­ap­pointed? After all, her jokes come off much bet­ter aloud than on the page. My ridicu­lous illu­sion goes like this: When I read Annie, I begin to think tran­scen­dence really exists. It is some­thing really dif­fer­ent, I think, When you catch it, your hair turns stark white and you can hike for days with only a palm­ful of grain. The Annie I cre­ated in my mind was a promis­cu­ous, but sin­gle, gray­ing hag since age 17. She offi­ci­ated wed­dings for ani­mals and per­formed ten­der surg­eries on chil­dren. She was evolved.

And now? She’s still all those things, and prob­a­bly more, but she’s also nice. She also gets very thirsty on stage, gulps down water, and then imi­tates her­self by gob­bling like a turkey. It’s not that her tran­scen­dence isn’t real, its just that it’s famil­iar. Judg­ing by Annie’s pub­lic per­sona, my 10h grade Eng­lish teacher with the bald spot who danced a hip hop rou­tine for the whole school was actu­ally in a state of grace inac­ces­si­ble to the rest of us.

So this isn’t some­thing new, and it isn’t some­thing depress­ing, but it is some­thing. Annie made me hope that one day, when I tran­scended, I’d be able to tell. My sub­li­ma­tion into the uncat­e­go­rized Uni­verse would be obvi­ous from the ring of smoke that always sur­rounded my feet. I would start crav­ing mahogany and going to church again. I’m not so sure any­more. Her voice came through my lap­top speak­ers like muf­fled tin and I had to ask myself, How do I know that the world and the ris­ing of the world and the ceas­ing of the world isn’t in my fathom-high body right now?

At the height of my obses­sion with Annie, I wrote: I wish I could hunt your voice–that heavy stone rib­boned with skin and capa­ble of blood–or maybe break your fruit from its ten­der neck and find the seeded heart, halve its star.…Still, your lit­tle voice car­ries its cold shell for­ward, a rivulet between my spruce and climbs.

Here’s to you, Annie Dillard.