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Aug. 27th, 2006 01:07 pmThe fact that I'm rereading my Diane Ackerman collection is showing. While never espousing any organized religion personally, she's as effective as the most stirring Buddhist texts I've ever seen at encouraging mindfulness and presence. Her ability to both wonder at and dissect the world around us results in this amazing lyricism, where the most complex concepts of biology are presented with a clarity and grace that makes reading her a delight.
My most tattered copies of her works (I've got most, but not all, some are out of print and hard to find.) are A Natural History of the Senses and A Slender Thread; Rediscovering Hope in the Heart of Crisis. The first was my introduction to her work, a lucky pick at the library when I was still in college, and what really brought her to the attention of the world at large. The second is an account of her work as a volunteer for a crisis line, a topic I remain fond of thanks to long-ago memories of a kind voice taking the time to listen to a troubled child. A Slender Thread weaves the memory of working the crisis line with a memoir about doing a study of grey squirrels for National Geographic, leading to chapter titles like _Squirrels and the Dark Night of the Soul_, which will never stop being funny.
Cultivating Delight; A Natural History of my Garden is a somewhat more recent work, edging its way up into my top 3 list. In all her works, but this one and her latest, An Alchemy of Mind; The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain, she establishes a sense of deeply personal connection to the reader, whether this is because on a certain level there is a commonality (troubled past, sense of being an outsider/perceiving the world in a way that is often considered to lack value, etc.) or is more a matter of the astonishing generousity of her authorial voice, I couldn't say. While quite a few of her works can be considered memoir, like Cultivating Delight, The Rarest of the Rare, or On Extended Wings, her latest two seem more relavatory, adding a deeper level to experiences she's described in previous books, like an accident briefly mentioned in The Rarest of the Rare, where during a trip to a remote Japanese island to see the last remaining short tailed albatross', she fell down a cliff, breaking several ribs and developing a nearly lethal fever. In that book, the incident gets a few paragraphs, almost an apology for not being able to describe a longer period on the island, but in An Alchemy of Mind she uses it to illustrate certain neurochemical reactions, almost incidently giving the reader a sense of the intensity and terror of the experience.
Deep Play is one I frequently recommend to the artists I know, as it's a study of 'transcendent' experience brought on by "emotionally and physically vigorous activity". I haven't read it all yet, as it's a more recent purchase, but in all of her works she returns to ideas of creativity and artistic drive, drawing connections to everything from brain chemistry to the history of gardening, or baths. I've never been disappointed in her work, and nothing would please me more than sharing it with friends.
(I've decided to write every day, since I've started to feel that relationships I value have suffered by my lack of posting. Not allowing a lack of inspiration to prevent this, today you get fangirling.:))
My most tattered copies of her works (I've got most, but not all, some are out of print and hard to find.) are A Natural History of the Senses and A Slender Thread; Rediscovering Hope in the Heart of Crisis. The first was my introduction to her work, a lucky pick at the library when I was still in college, and what really brought her to the attention of the world at large. The second is an account of her work as a volunteer for a crisis line, a topic I remain fond of thanks to long-ago memories of a kind voice taking the time to listen to a troubled child. A Slender Thread weaves the memory of working the crisis line with a memoir about doing a study of grey squirrels for National Geographic, leading to chapter titles like _Squirrels and the Dark Night of the Soul_, which will never stop being funny.
Cultivating Delight; A Natural History of my Garden is a somewhat more recent work, edging its way up into my top 3 list. In all her works, but this one and her latest, An Alchemy of Mind; The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain, she establishes a sense of deeply personal connection to the reader, whether this is because on a certain level there is a commonality (troubled past, sense of being an outsider/perceiving the world in a way that is often considered to lack value, etc.) or is more a matter of the astonishing generousity of her authorial voice, I couldn't say. While quite a few of her works can be considered memoir, like Cultivating Delight, The Rarest of the Rare, or On Extended Wings, her latest two seem more relavatory, adding a deeper level to experiences she's described in previous books, like an accident briefly mentioned in The Rarest of the Rare, where during a trip to a remote Japanese island to see the last remaining short tailed albatross', she fell down a cliff, breaking several ribs and developing a nearly lethal fever. In that book, the incident gets a few paragraphs, almost an apology for not being able to describe a longer period on the island, but in An Alchemy of Mind she uses it to illustrate certain neurochemical reactions, almost incidently giving the reader a sense of the intensity and terror of the experience.
Deep Play is one I frequently recommend to the artists I know, as it's a study of 'transcendent' experience brought on by "emotionally and physically vigorous activity". I haven't read it all yet, as it's a more recent purchase, but in all of her works she returns to ideas of creativity and artistic drive, drawing connections to everything from brain chemistry to the history of gardening, or baths. I've never been disappointed in her work, and nothing would please me more than sharing it with friends.
(I've decided to write every day, since I've started to feel that relationships I value have suffered by my lack of posting. Not allowing a lack of inspiration to prevent this, today you get fangirling.:))
