Reader Response Log For Loren Eiseley’s "The Flow of the River"

1. “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. Its least stir, even, as now in a rain pond on a flat roof opposite my office, is enough to bring me searching to the window. A wind ripple may be translating itself into life” (256).

I’m thinking about “a wind ripple… translating itself into life.” I wonder what Eiseley means by this. I can’t help trying to picture it… wind rippling across a puddle. The elements in the air would mix with the elements in the water. What are elements in the air? The wind might be carrying some tiny microorganism which would mix with the water. If the organism is compatible with the elements of water, this might begin the cycle of transformation. On a slightly larger scale, the air carries mosquitoes. Mosquitoes come in contact with water, lay eggs (or something) which turn into those little squiggly worms, which turn into mosquitoes. Yuk! I wish I could think of something that doesn’t just result in the proliferation of pests! (Question, Connection, Interpretation).

2. “Thin vapors, rust, wet tar and sun are an alembic remarkably like the mind; they throw off odorous shadows that threaten to take real shape when no one is looking” (257).

alembic: 1: an apparatus used in distillation 2: something that refines or transmutes as if by distillation (Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary). distillation: 1 a: the process of purifying a liquid by successive evaporation and condensation (Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary).

This passage confuses me because I am trying to think of how “rust” is distilled or refined. But the word in the distillation definition, “process,” helps. Everything, including rust, becomes what it is through process, like that of distillation. In other words, the mind is “alembic” in that, like elements of water, thoughts float in proximity to the surface. Some thoughts are conscious and near the surface; others are subconscious or in the depths. As thoughts evaporate, or leave the surface of our conscious minds, others are brought nearer the surface and undergo the same process. The mind is like a churning sea with thoughts changing places in the constant movement. “Odorous” suggests diffusion of thoughts. Which is what thoughts do when they rise above the surface to consciousness (writing thoughts, speaking thoughts, or conscious consideration). (Question, Summary).

3. “…common water. Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air” (257).

In other words, water connects everything. It is through the substance of water that earth meets and physically touches air. Through evaporation, minerals, and pollution (I’m thinking of the acid in rain) rise. Through condensation they fall, and then permeate the soil. For example, the aerosol and Freon of yesterdays hairsprays and refrigerators have eaten a hole in the ozone layer and are therefore part of the present and future. How else does it “touch the past and prepare[…] the future”? As for touching the past, I’m getting images of the seashell fossils in caves which were once beneath the ocean and now rise hundreds of feet above the surface. Touching the future? Well… those fossils are going to be around for a long, long time. (Summary, Interpretation)

4. “… as I was finally edged gently against a sand bar and dropped like any log, I tottered as I rose. I knew once more the body’s revolt against emergence into the harsh and unsupporting air, its reluctance to break contact with that mother element which still, at this late point in time, shelters and brings into being nine tenths of everything alive” (259).

This makes me think of the journey of birth. For months, a human embryo is so small that it can swim/float freely in the mother’s womb. As the baby grows, the space becomes cramped. Still, the baby is surrounded by warmth and wet. When, leaving the tight passage of the birth canal, the baby is born, its arms and legs flail about in the “unsupporting air.” The sudden increase of light and sound, and the sudden decrease of warm support, must be a very foreign environment. (Connection)

5. “At that moment I started to turn away, but something in the bleak whiskered face reproached me, or perhaps it was the river calling to her children. I termed it science, however—a convenient rational phrase I reserve for such occasion” (260).

This reminds me that I used to think of “science” as cold and rational. But I certainly don’t find Eiseley’s essay cold and the rational is mixed with the metaphysical (“the river calling to her children”). And I think scientific fields of inquiry must be full of mystery and all, and involve making blueprints and maps of the invisible. (Connection)

6. “Fishes in the drying shallows of intermittent prairie streams who feel their confinement and have the impulse to leap while there is yet time may regain the main channel and survive. A million ancestral years had gone into that jump, I thought as I looked at him, a million years of climbing through prairie sunflowers and twining in and out through the pillared legs of drinking mammoth” (261).

This makes me think of connection again, and especially the exchange and transformation of elements. A dead body is buried, disintegrates, and mixes with earth. Rain falls, carrying bits of earth and what was body into streams. Streams evaporate and rise with their particles to the clouds. Winds blow the clouds to other regions. Rains fall again and those particles return to earth, are sucked in by roots. As plants bloom the elements are transformed to blossoms which eventually fall, decay, and turn again to earth. It is conceivable that through the course of eternity we could travel everywhere. (Connection) 7) “After a while the skilled listener can distinguish man’s noise from the katydid’s rhythmic assertion, allow for the offbeat of a rabbit’s thumping, pick up the autumnal monotone of crickets, and find in all of them a grave pleasure without admitting any to a place of preeminence in his thoughts” (262).

Is Eiseley trying to imply distinctions here, as well as pointing them out? There is the distinction between “man’s noise” and the rest of nature; but also one between “skilled listener” and an unskilled one. This seems to suggest that there are those who can feel, or intuit the connection of all things, and those who divide nature into hierarchical categories of greater and lesser (with humans, of course, at the top of the chain). Those in this latter category might tend to give attention to whatever is perceived as being at the top of the chain, to what is superior; while the “skilled listener” would be aware of the necessity of all natural beings, and the interdependence which exists between them. (Question, interpretation)

8. “We [Eiseley and his catfish] were both projections out of that timeless ferment and locked as well in some greater unity that lay incalculably beyond us. In many a fin and reptile foot I have seen myself passing by—some part of myself, that is, some part that lies unrealized in the momentary shape I inhabit” (261-62).

This reminds me of children asking questions about the beginning of the world, and how we got here. And though we tend to give answers to these questions (i.e. the sperm and the egg) we’re really only guessing about most of our origins. And we don’t have to go back very far before we can’t even guess (as far as getting the information from our own direct experiences anyway). Our origins are a mystery. Where were the atoms that make up my body 100 years ago? Where will they be 100 years from now? I would love to know!

9. “ People have occasionally written me harsh letters and castigated me for a lack of faith in man when I have ventured to speak of this matter in print. They distrust, it would seem, all shapes and thoughts but their own. They would bring God into the compass of a shopkeeper’s understanding and confine Him to those limits, lest He proceed to some unimaginable and shocking act—create perhaps, as a casual afterthought, a being more beautiful than man. As for me, I believe nature capable of this, and having been part of the flow of the river, I feel no envy—any more than the frog envies the reptile or an ancestral ape should envy man” (262).

My first thought on this is how I dislike people who think they can tell me who/what God is and specifically how God wants me to live. These people seem to know not just the origins of humans, but our destination too. My second thought is that I can certainly understand the comfort of having answers to the mysteries. Sometimes, when I think of death, I feel afraid. And if I thought I could control what ever happens after death by performing some actions here and now… I’d perform. ( I do think our actions and our lives have lasting effects.) But, death is something I just can’t see beyond. There are certain prevalent after death scenarios that I prefer over others. I could really go for reincarnation I think. For one thing, I’d get to have many different experiences of life, and possibly travel the globe!!! But I don’t know what happens after death. As for making “being more beautiful than man”… I am trying to imagine what could be more beautiful. Maybe a creature that only had our good qualities and none of our bad. Is there already being more beautiful than man? (Connection, Question)

10. “There is no logical reason for the existence of a snowflake any more than there is for evolution. It is an apparition from that mysterious shadow world beyond nature, that final world which contains—if anything contains—the explanation of men and catfish and green leaves” (263).

In other words, we glimpse existence in the amazing works of nature, but the explanation for this world is beyond our knowing.

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Assignment#2 English 101

Questions and Responses for 3 Essays

On George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”: “Despite the difficulties you may have understanding specific allusion, what advice from Orwell can you apply to your own writing? To your reading?”

One of Orwell’s suggestions for clarity in prose writing is “…to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations” (567). One possible application of this suggestion would be to actually draw a picture of a concept, or situation that I want to put into words. Along with a picture, I could add a list of “sensations”. Let’s say I want to recapture the morning of my grandmother’s death. I could sketch my memory of her as she lay in her bed, her closed eyes, the position of her hands, and her white wisps of hair spread upon her pillow. I could add the sense of peace I felt, noticing she was at rest and no longer struggling. My sketch might act as a cue to prompt further memories. Or, if I wanted to write about the concept of injustice, I could sketch or imagine a scene where injustice was occurring. Then I could jot down a list of images and sensations. This suggestion also applies to reading. I’m remembering something Robin Moore said. (He’s the author of a book on writing, the title of which I can’t remember right now.) Moore said that books are dead tree carcasses with ink blotches and that there are no stories in books. The stories are in our heads and we discover them through the images we are able to translate from the written page. (This is a very loose paraphrase.) In other words, when reading, it is a natural occurrence for me to translate the letters into images, and the images into stories. For a particularly difficult passage of reading, I could pause, close my eyes, and pay attention to the images that come to my mind. Or, if I want to understand a character better, I could read a portion of character description, then imagine the character, then sketch or write about what I imagined.

On Cynthia Ozick’s “The Seam of the Snail”: “In this essay Ozick describes two different kinds of excellence—one of “ripe generosity” and one of narrow perfectionism. Can you find examples of these two kinds of excellence in your own experience? Write an essay in which you explore the contrasts between these two kinds of excellence in broader detail.”

Are perfectionist tendencies at odds with generousness of spirit? Ozick uses one set of characteristics to describe herself and the other to describe her mother. But, all of these tendencies are at work in me. As I once explained to my mother, my house is usually messy because I am a perfectionist. This made no sense to her, so I explained further. When I clean house I become a domestic dictator. Are you finished with that glass? Then you need to put it in the dishwasher? Are those your schoolbooks? Take them to your room. Did you wipe your feet? Please put the lid back on the peanut butter and put it in the pantry. I’m relentless! Over and over again I have pleaded with my children, If you worked very hard constructing a building and, after you were finished, someone came and knocked it down, how would you feel? Well, that’s how I feel when I’ve been cleaning and you come along behind me and mess everything up. I’ve said these things over and over again and have even thought about putting them on a tape recording so I could just push a button instead of wasting my breath. But I hate the way these tirades make me feel. So, these days, my house looks very lived in. As long as I don’t go on one of my perfectionist cleaning binges, I don’t mind as much if it gets messed up. I figure I’ll clean house again when my kids are all grown. Still, I’m not always generous where my children’s sloppy habits are concerned. Before the day is out I’ll be telling my sons: You know, the dishwasher is just a foot away from the sink. Is it that much extra effort to turn your body 30 degrees and but your bowl in there?

On Loren Eiseley’s “The Flow of the River”: “ ‘If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water,’ Eiseley writes in his opening sentence. Elaborate on this statement, focusing on your own experiences with nature.”

I am thinking of all the bodies of water I have had the privilege of becoming acquainted with. When my sister Sandra and I were girls, we would strip to our undies on rainy days and play in the marsh wet back yard had become. I can still feel the sponginess of earth, and the slippery tentacles of grass against my feet. I remember playing in the stream which ran alongside the park below my childhood home, carefully lifting big flat stones so as not to disturb the silt along the creek bed, and scooping up crawdads in rusty tin cans. And, I remember being absolutely fascinated by the rainbarrel which set on the back edge of my grandmother’s house where rain ran tumbled from gutter pipes to become its contents. In her early years, my grandmother used water from the rainbarrel to wash clothes. Later, my grandparents kept it in case the house caught on fire. I loved staring into the rainbarrel, its black surface speckled with bits of insect wings glistening in the sunlight. I love the sound of water: rain falling on the roof and skylight, rapid water gurgling over stones, waves of ocean crashing upon the shore. Some of my journaling buddies and I have wracked our brains trying to come up with a new and startling way to say “babbling brook”. Like Eiseley, I never learned to swim properly. Still, I can stay afloat and have done so in all types of waters: pools, ponds, creeks. Lakes, rivers, oceans. In Turkey, I walked barefoot over a hard beach of polished stones so I could step into the cold January waters of the Mediterranean. And I have steamed in the healing waters which flow down from the Travertine Mountains in Cappodocia. My toes have explored the warmer waters of the Pacific from the shores of Mazatlan, Mexico, the pull of the undertow in rough currents of the Atlantic, and the calm of the big blue bathtub off the island of St. Martin. I’ve seen falls, from the small trickles which pour over the sides of mountains after rain, to larger ones like Black Water, and the mammoth Niagara. When I am stressed, closing my eyes and imagining any of these waters calms me. I am helped along by the bubbling of a small terra cotta fountain beside my desk.

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Assignment #1

Susan Brownmiller’s essay on “Femininity” interests me because the overview suggests it discusses stereotypes and the societal limits placed on females of all ages.  I just became the grandmother of Abby, and while I was shopping for books for her the stereotypical themes and images (even in those little infant cardboard books) struck me as glaring.  Train books and car books, for example, have male characters… like Tommy the Tank Engine.  It is amazing to me how early we are pushed into the roles we’re meant to go in.  I remember my Homeroom Mother experiences when my kids were in grade school.  At the Christmas parties, all the little girls were given stickers and little notebooks, while the boys all got clacker balls and slingshots.  Who in their right mind would rather have stickers than a slingshot????  I have a lot of personal experience that I could draw upon for this subject.  The overview also promises Brownmiller’s explanation of the source of feminine power.  This raises my curiosity.  Do I even want to know?  I mean… if the source of female power is physical beauty… does this mean I’m societally powerless? (126). (related essays “The Wound in the Face” (141) and “About Men” (251)..

 Annie Dillard’s essay, “Living Like Weasels,” interests me for several reasons.  One, Dillard has been recommended to me over and over by friends who have suggested I read her different works.  Also… someone this summer actually compared my writing to Dillard’s.  I think this must be because I also write about nature.  The overview of her essay says she makes comparisons between humans and nature and suggests that she might favor our animal instincts and the mysterious nature of things over rational thought.  This interests me because I think too much.  One of the things I think is that you can never really get to the end of logic which is a kind of questioning that always seems to lead to more questions.  Also, I think we learn much from our emotions.  How could we logically decide that a situation was unjust, if we hadn't experienced the pain of injustice in our own lives?  I am interested too, in what Dillard says about choice… This seems to be what separates us from the animals…

 Loren Eisely’s  “The Flow of the River” looks good too.  I love water (creeks, rivers, oceans, ponds, puddles, fountains)… and I like the idea of water having “magical properties” (overview).   Eisely’s biographical sketch says he was an anthropologist and that he wrote a book on evolution.  What would his take on that subject be, I wonder?  I don’t usually associate magic with science… so that would be an interesting exploration.  I’m just remembering something that happened when my daughter and I were walking in Spring Hill Cemetery this summer.  It was growing dark when we noticed a misty, veil-like thing floating above the garden on the hill above the Jewish section of burial sites.  For a minute… well, it did occur to us that it might be a ghost.  It didn’t look like anything else.  We stared and stared till my daughter finally figured out it wasn’t the Lady in White… but a man watering the garden… the spray coming from the end of the hose arched up and flowed down like a ghost body.  Anyway… we were kind of wondering what it would be like if it really had been a ghost and were a little tiny disappointed that our lives were normal, as always, with a rational explanation behind everything.  But Eisely finds magic and marvel in “common substances”… so maybe his essay would offer a good perspective. (256).

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