Who would not wish to take such a creature home? To glimpse something so gaudily tropical, more like a quetzal than a sparrow, on your own home ground; to pursue it across the lawn, down the stone steps, around the two topiary peacocks that stood guard over the wading pool, and along the flower border until it lit on a phlox or a zinnia; to swoop your net through the air and see something fluttering inside; to snatch that bit of life from the rich chaos of nature into your own comparatively lackluster world, which it instantly brightened and enlarged; to look it up in Klots and name it and know it- well, after you did that a few times, it was hard to muster much enthusiasm for Parcheesi.
from At Large and At Small, by Anne Fadiman
Sigh. Am blissfully content. Reading her essays are a delightful afternoon’s ramble from a well-manicured garden into the unruly beyond, and back again.
2 Comments
August 4, 2008 at 2:18 pm
I bought it and I love it! Wonderful read!
August 5, 2008 at 1:52 am
YAY! I’m reading “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by the same author now. It’s a very different genre- anthropology but still very good. =)