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Fwd: Re: Moth

Okay, I don't know if anyone gave the address for the
annie dillard thing (because I'm on digest and I've
not read through them all...but if I don't answer when
I read something, I won't ever answer)...but here's
the passages:

It's from _Holy the Firm_ by
> Annie Dillard, Perrenial Library, 1988, pages 14-17.
> I have so much to say about it, but I want you to
> get
> your impression first:
> 
> 	**Two summers ago I was camping alone in the Blue
> Ridge Mountains in Virginia. I had hauled myself
> andgear up there to read, among other things, a
> novel
> about Rimbaud that had made me want to be a writer 
> when I was sixteen; I was hoping it would do it
> again.
> So I read, lost, every day sitting under a tree by
> my
> tent, while warblers swung in the leaves overhead
> and
> bristle worms trailed their inches over the twiggy
> dirt at my feet; and I read every night by
> candlelight, while barred owls called in the forest
> and pale moths massed round my head in the clearing,
> where my light made a ring.
> 	Moths kept flying into the candle. They would hiss
> and recoil, lost upside down in the shadows among my
> cooking pans.  Or they would singe their wings and
> fall, and their hot wings, if melted, would stick to
> the first thing they touched--a pan, a lid, a
> spoon--so that the snagged moths could flutter only
> in
> tiny arcs, unable to struggle free. These I could
> release by a quick flip with a stick; in the morning
> I
> would find my cooking stuff gilded with torn flecks
> of
> moth wings, triangles of shiny dust here and there
> on
> the aluminum. So I read, and boiled water, and
> replenished
> candles, and read on.
> 	One night a moth flew into the candle, was caught,
> burnt dry, and held. I must have been staring at the
> candle, or maybe I looked up when a shadow crossed
> my
> page, because I saw it all. A golden female moth, a
> biggish one with a two-inch wingspan, flapped into
> the
> fire, dropped her abdomen into the wet wax, stuck,
> flamed, frazzled and fried in a second.  Her moving
> wings ignited like tissue paper, enlarging the
> circle
> or light in the clearing and creating out of the
> darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater, red
> trunk of a pine.  At once the light contracted
> again and the moth’s wings vanished in a fine, foul
> smoke. At the same time her six legs clawed, curled,
> blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly. And her
> head jerked in spasms, making a spattering noise;
> heaving mouth parts crackled like pistol fire. When
> it
> was all over, her head was, so far as I could
> determine gone, gone the long way of her wings and
> legs. Had she been new, or old?  Had she mated and
> laid her eggs, had she done her work?  All that was
> left was the glowing horn shell of her abdomen and
> thorax--a fraying, partially collapsed gold tube
> jammed
> upright in the candle’s round pool.
> 
> 
> 	And then this moth-essence, this spectacular
> skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning.
> The wax rose in the moth’s body from her soaking
> abdomen to the jagged hole where her head should be,
> and widened into flame, a saffron-yellow flame that
> robed her to the ground like any immolating monk.
> That
> candle had two wicks, two flames of identical
> height,
> side by side. The moth’s head was fire. She burned
> for
> two hours, until I blew her out.
> 	She burned for two hours without changing, without
> bending or leaning--only glowing within, like a
> building fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls,
> like
> a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to
> God,
> while I read by her light, kindled, while Rimbaud in
> Paris burnt out his brains in a thousand poems,
> while
> night pooled wetly at my feet.**
> 
> Please, share your thoughts with me...
> Jeni
>
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