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Extravagant gestures

This just sings

At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a well-known signal that meant, β€œCome down to the water.” It was an extravagant gesture, but we can’t do less. If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames


from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek , by Annie Dillard, 1974

Oct 10, 2008, updated Mar 31, 2025