The Entire Universe Dwells by Leah Strickman

THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE DWELLS A COLLECTION OF WORKS BY WENDELL BERRY

THESIS Wendell Berry’s love of and connection to nature is rooted in his belief that all of the natural world is interconnected, and in order for part of it to thrive, it must all thrive. This belief mirrors the principles of zen buddhism and eastern philosophy (although Berry’s take on them is more angry than peaceful). In this book, I’d like to explore the connection between Berry’s writing and the aesthetic and principles of zen buddhism.

O NT

VE WO

THE

BEYOND AND

FL I

es ngin

and

a thou s

him

ith

HIS

E NC ILE ES D YEARS AGO. TH SAN OU RS TH EA A , E him ER AIN! DR re IN fo W HE WIL L NGS H EA SO R! AT

THE

, IND

DOWS OF THE GRAS S AN N SHA D

DA RK and of his own hear t, his w N rong ES IN fe s o g SE s E S H H T r A O s D G T o O N e I W w / S n S N no THA HT / ari KI e G l T d U A GR w O un OW O W HE O P E N S I N TH fo SH the FURR D rg THE of HE O N T iv EA e T U O s e A Y T RT H n I N E T H O IS BO H B O F O NE E S PE S, D AN N DEAD TRIBES E S H D T F ME O H N E ES B U U H presences w RI what NG ill r ED ise hen t TO H WERS, A E up nd G FLO ND be .A RIN o T A HE g BE D S D W E W TH

AS TH OU

C EN

H I

“Well, the moon could be just a little brighter, and it could be a teensy bit warmer.” I could hear that he was grinning. He was in one of his companionable moods, making fun of himself. I laughed, and we rode without talking up out of the Katy’s Branch valley and turned onto the state road.

WORKED HARD A ND

“It couldn’t be better, could it?”

fragrant with smoke.

E LT

“Fine night,” he said. He had lit a cigarette, and the cab was

ARE Y

I laughed, and

TO IN

G N

onto the

stat e

d urne d t .

HE WOULD B EGI N

I T.

.”

“ I T ’ S AW F U L T H E T H I N

lle

“It’s awful the things that can get into your mind,” Elton said. “I’d hate it if anything was to happen to them.” The Rowanberrys were Elton’s friends, and because they were

ST , FIR ERE

his, they were mine. Elton had known them ever since he was just a little half-orphan boy, living with his mother and older brothers on the next farm up the creek. He had got a lot of his raising by being underfoot and in the way at the Rowanberrys’. And in the

time of his manhood, the Rowanberry Place had been one of his ES

D TE

resting places.

Elton worked hard and worried hard, and he was often in need

of rest. But he had a restless mind, which meant that he could not

rest on his own place in the presence of his own work. If he rested there, first he would begin to think about what he had to do, and

EN IN NEE S OFT D O F

then he would begin to do it. RE

To rest, he needed to be in somebody else’s place. We spent a lot of Sunday afternoons down at the Rowanberrys’, on the porch looking out into the little valley in the summertime, inside by the

stove if it was winter. Art and Mart batched there together after

ELSE DY

’S PLACE

their mother died, and in spite of the electric lights and telephone and a few machines, they lived a life that would have been recognizable to Elias Rowanberry, who had marked his X in the county’s first deed book – a life that involved hunting and fishing and foraging as conventionally as it involved farming. They practiced an old-fashioned independence, an old-fashioned generosity, and

EEDED TO HE N BE

an old-fashioned fidelity to their word and their friends. And they were hound men of the old correct school. They would not let a dog tree anywhere in earshot, day or night, workday or Sunday, without going to him. “It can be a nuisance,” Art said, “but it don’t hardly seem right to disappoint ‘em.”

D AN

WA HE

S RE

out of the Ka ty’ g up n I F T i A I N s B E T Y A T k HING I’D H al ra “ t . W At S ID nc A u S TO o h N h t O H i T AP EL PE ” N D, TO IN M TH R U E O DO, AND THEN O T HE AD W E H H OU T LD HA BE W T G U I O

Mart was the one Elton liked best to work with. Mart was not only a fine hand but had a gift for accommodating himself to the rhythms and ways of his partner. “He can think your 7

thoughts,” Elton said. Between the two of them was a sympathy of body and mind that they had worked out and that they trusted with an unshaken, unspoken trust. And so Elton was always at ease and quiet in Mart’s company when they were at rest. Art was the rememberer. He knew what he knew and what had been known by a lot of dead kinfolks and neighbors. They lived on in his mind and spoke there, reminding him and us of things that needed to be remembered. Art had a compound mind, as a

WE FOLLOWED T HE STAT E ROA D A L ONG T H E R I DGE S TOWA RD PORT WILLIA M A ND T H E N AT T H E E DGE OF TOWN T U RNED DOWN T HE S A ND R I PPL E R OA D. daisy has a compound flower, and his mind had something of the unwary comeliness of a daisy. Something that happened would remind him of something that he remembered, which would remind him of something that his grandfather remembered. It was not that he “lived in his mind.” He lived in the place, but the place was where the memories were, and he walked among them, tracing them out over the living ground. That was why we loved him. We followed the state road along the ridges toward Port William and then at the edge of town turned down the Sand Ripple Road. We went down the hill through the woods, and as we came near the floor of the valley, Elton went more carefully and we began to watch. We crossed a little board culvert that rattled under the wheels, eased around a bend, and there was the backwater, the headlights glancing off it into the treetops, the road disappearing into it. Elton stopped the truck. He turned off his headlights and the engine, and the quietness of the moonlight and the woods came down around us. I could hear the peepers again. It was wonderful what the road going under the water did to that place. It was not only that we could not go where we were used to going; it was as if a thought that we were used to thinking could not be thought. “Listen!” Elton said. He had heard a barred owl off in the woods. He quietly rolled the window down. And then, right overhead, an owl answered: “HOOOOOAWWW!”

T BRANCHES, EVEN THE BLOO

O O

N , A

LITTLES

E A N

R SP

S TIE

E OV

THE AD RHE

THE

T W I N L E A F, B L O O D R O O T, MS OF

T RY

–

R DE

BLOO THE

And the far one said, “Hoo hoo hoohooaw!” “Listen!” Elton said again. He was whispering. The owls went through their whole repertory of hoots and clucks and cackles and gobbles. “Listen to them!” Elton said. “They’ve got a lot on their minds.” Being in the woods at night excited him. He was a hunter. And we were excited by the flood’s interruption of the road. The rising of the wild water had moved us back in time. Elton quietly opened his door and got out and then, instead of slamming the door, just pushed it to. I did the same and came around and followed him as he walked slowly down the road, looking for a place to climb out of the cut. Once we had climbed the bank and stepped over the fence and were walking among the big trees, we seemed already miles from the truck. The water gleamed over the bottomlands below us on our right; you could not see that there had ever been a road in that place. I followed Elton along the slope through the trees. Neither of us thought to use a flashlight, though we each had one, nor did we talk. The moon gave plenty of light. We could see everything – underfoot the blooms of twinleaf, bloodroot, rue anemone, the little stars of spring beauties, and overhead the littlest branches, even the blooms on the sugar maples. The ground was soft from the rain, and we hardly made a sound. The flowers around us seemed to float in the shadows so that we walked like waders among stars, uncertain how far down to put our feet. And over the broad shine of the backwater, the calling of the peepers rose like another flood, higher than the water flood, and thrilled and trembled in the air. It was a long walk because we had to go around the inlets of the backwater that lay in every swag and hollow. Way off, now and again, we could hear the owls. Once we startled a deer and stood still while it plunged away into the shadows. And always we were walking among flowers. I wanted to keep thinking that they were like stars, but after a while I could not think so. They were not like stars. They did not have that hard, distant glitter. And yet in their pale, peaceful way, they shone. They collected their little share of light and gave it back. Now and then, when we came to an especially thick patch of them, Elton would point. Or he would raise his hand and we would stop a minute and listen to the owls.

IN A M ON

LOWERS G F

IDE

SISTIB

LE AS A WIND.

FEE

L T H

E Y EA R

R ST

IRRE ND

AROUND US WE C OU

E YS W WERE W A W AL AL K

HE EARTH T ING E N R I C H T H E E A RT H I H A TO

VE S OW ED CLO D E I N THE SE W O L P E V A EDS VE H I . // O RA IE D D FW ND AN THEIR G I N ROW GR TE OW T R R H AS G GR TO O S B A T F F E A O L E A H I N T N D TH PLO D S E D OUN W R AN EC ED E G AY D TH and so mended the ear th OF IN O O and T T T N O H I D S m N O A M / E E / a N S DED E de G ED SON THE its RO SEA RR I E y . K T I R A A M AR ie SLOW HE D AS ST ld TH ES T LY FP in FA E RV AN O S L T AR H E , S E N H H I LI O T D T T E H V KN N W OW SER LT G AL TO IN s y a d T y G E m Y d W an D r, N CE, FOR WHEN I V ai R TH e SE E eath, wil th S W ling fter d A D’ . I e or N lif O W H AT W n S f o D o AS N .A H H T E I S AT L A U M ST T S ISED UP RA I

F R VA

AS S

REA

SONG

WIDENESS ES A

SE.

IV ,G

INC

ER IS

YIE

ITS

I H AND TH E DE AV CA E YO FT HE G INTO THE FUND RO OF TH IN and G ad S. eli A P SS. IT A gh LY L O H I t S to TH T W O E ne lives at the e N M do xp I O an e n RING THE E s T e N E EA RT AND MO

DO THE HAND S SO ILS er ves, dy s FA o LL eb th EST VI EA

RIPE

GRAS

SHEADS BEND IN THE ST AR

US A N D S O UN NT THO F ST DE SILE AR T R H S G A TH I G R OWN ND BR E TO T H ME E there was a feel LIK L ing E in A U T A LWAY S B t , h S TA EM em TH RT LIN TO OF G TH OF THE T H E G W U O ILD TH ASLE EP I

F E LT T H E C O U N T

RY T UR N

AND

RO U ND.

VA L

EL T HE

I N T E R N I G H T, AW N , ,O FED HT D AN

T R AV

ILL

THE

IN T HE SO FT

AT N I G H T

LIGH T O M H L T E A S F S , , S T S HE LO A R G E NG F TH BLA /O DE O F T / T U H O E W S G S E N I L S S L I E OF R N T K I R ME . C DA G THE DARK, // AN E NDIN AR D I F H R AC T TS S H ING IG L C E N I E L H I A S V EM E SU O IR S A I E H R N. DDE A T TH RO N LY AB E, EIR I A M WH O L LY W I L L I H O . H M N EA T NG W VE A RD W TO DD R O , O U G T OF T B N I L A R U E HE E W PO HE GR SS TO OU RE RA S G N A R E T E H R BE I CA D. A IFT TH HE NN L T T I T TH F S OT TIL O N E MO U E H T. IF VE O r . L I K H E lia T FO O i G NT EN m HE STR fa TH ES DR – W E ITS O Y G BE N I IN B DD U W A M R S M E E UR LA AT RE E N S C TS, EIR TH N EP U NDE DE

EA TH

E L AT

CONTEMPT FOR SMALL PLACES Newspaper editorials deplore such human-caused degradations of the oceans as the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone,” and reporters describe practices like “mountain removal” mining in eastern Kentucky. Some day we may finally understand the connections. The health of the oceans depends on the health of rivers; the health of rivers depends on the health of small streams; the health of small streams depends on the health of their water sheds. The health of the water is exactly the same as the health of the land; the health of small places is exactly the same as the health of large places. As we know, disease is hard to confine. Because natural law is in force everywhere, infections move.

THE HEA LT H OF RIV ERS DEPE NDS O N T H E H E A LT H OF S M A LL ST REA M S; T HE HE A LT H O F S MA L L S T R E A MS D E PENDS ON T HE HEA LT H O F T H E I R WAT E R S H E DS . We cannot immunize the continents and the oceans against our contempt for small places and small streams. Small destructions add up, and finally they are understood collectively as large destructions. Excessive nutrient run off from farms and animal factories in the Mississippi watershed has caused, in the Gulf of Mexico, a hypoxic or “dead zone” of five or six thousand square miles. In forty-odd years, strip mining in the Appalachian coal fields, culminating in mountain removal, has gone far toward the destruction of a whole region, with untold damage to the region’s people, to watersheds, and to the waters downstream. There is not a more exemplary history of our contempt for small places than that of Eastern Kentucky coal mining, which has enriched many absentee corporate shareholders and left the region impoverished and defaced. Coal industry representatives are now defending mountain removal-and its attendant damage to forests, streams, wells, dwellings, roads,and community life – by saying that in ”10, 15, 20 years” the land will be restored, and that such mining has “created the [level] land” needed for further industrial development.

As for the manufacture of level places for industrial development, the supply has already far exceeded any foreseeable demand. And the devastation continues. The contradictions in the state’s effort “to balance the competing interests” were stated as follows by Ewell Balltrip, director of the Kentucky Appalachian Commission: “If you don’t have mining, you don’t have an economy, and if you don’t have an economy you don’t have a way for the people to live. But if you don’t have environmental quality, you won’t create the kind of place where people want to live.” Yes. And if the clearly foreseeable result is a region of flat industrial sites where nobody wants to live, we need a better economy.

A AN B ETT E R T H W DA AT W RISE DE

Y A W AN RGU MENT ET DP ICK RE DB ERRI ES IN A

TO G THE DARK, O W GO O N K H T E D T DA A A O RK TH D , E V L E A DB N TR Y IS D

IGH EL

NGS.

W THE D AR K

O KN

. P U C A

O T IS

ITH A LIGH T IS RK W TO O H U T T I SIG W T KN O H T, IN . G LOOMS A A K B R N O, D TO EET AND F K DA R A D

DA HE

LIV

T WA

LEAP

ING

THE H ILL,

white over the rocks. Where the mossy root of a sycamore cups the flow, I drank

THE SPRING R N AI I N N OFF

and saw the branches feathered with green.

The thickets, I said, send up their praise at dawn.

IN I CLIMBED IL RA UP TO

Was that what I meant – I meant my words to have the heft and grace, the flight E RY H I L L , I T S F THE V LIFE HT O // RIS D I AB ES WITH IN T A H D T G M N E? – A O W R E’ LL W A N crazy old Mrs. Gaines, whom my grandmother O T

IG WE

ON TAT I XUL DE FA I T H O F O U R FAT THE

not cramped up,” and when she grew wild they kept her there. But mostly she went free in the town, and they allowed the children to go for walks with her. She strayed once

W T S HE

fin

the virgin forest standing here, the amplitude ofour beginning, of which no speech remains. Out of the town’s lost history, buried in minds long buried, she has come, brought back by a memory near death. I see her in her dusky clothes, hair uncombed, the children circle of all lovers. On this height our labor changes into flight.

when my grandmother was a girl, she must have seen

her

An old woman

to follow after her?

out

that draws me on, so that my mind becomes a child

D W H E RE T H E Y T H O U

was only to be lost. What is it about her

s t i

ON BEY

– N O

finding her.” For her, to be free

into the turning and changing

t. W

HER S

A W

THEY HAD AN AW F

UL TIM r f e e e E was , to b o r n e ly r h to Fo be r. ” lo he s

TO ST

in a room, “nearly as big as the room,

ND , “A

one Cornbread.” They had a cage built for her

M HE

“One Lord, one Faith, and

atop a fence in Port Royal, Kentucky, singing:

APR HE

remembers standing balanced eighty years ago

RA IT

Y DA

ga or

m O

AN ST

G DIN

IN R

has hat

VE FIELDS I DO UGH I HA

I DO NOT GO OUT OWS

T G O

ed ripen

THE BALKS.// THOUG HI ROM HA SF D VE E I N T H E W E T. EE Z A R AN W G Y E E IM H H T T u d n e AL d s er the lo LE ir ro and c S t HI s o y IS f e s. W T s th T I H W O g U O T G n M Y i E. M THE ild Y S u E LIF b E E D , L I K E A H AY R I NC ve ST VER CK FE O AN C O E , V R E A A C A M PL

rw the

ERED,

S TA

MY LI FE

OV E, C

USE

O WH

O EH

Ih a

A UT

THO

E AV

H OR

. // ELP

ITH

’S

EA HE

EWI

REN H’S

ES FR TI NT EE H E GR A CE

ILD THIN GS

O IC

F I O N NT E O O C A T E H H EP TT T I AX TH W M I S T E T HEIR LIV OU A M GH R A T OF G IEF... FO D R N A D L R OF THE WO

BIOGRAPHY Wendell Berry (born August 5, 1934) is an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written dozens of novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry has been named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.

SELECTED WORKS “Are You Alright”. That Distant Land: The Collected Stories. Washington, D. C.: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004 “Comtempt For Small Places”. The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays. Washington, D. C.: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005

“The Silence” “Enriching the Earth” “On the Hill Late at Night” “To Know the Dark” “Meditation in the Spring Rain” “Rain”

P U B L I C AT I O N S ESSAYS

FICTION

POETRY

Another Turn of the Crank, 1996 The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, 2002 Citizenship Papers, 2003 A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural & Agricultural, 1972 The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural & Agricultural, 1981 Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work, 1990 The Hidden Wound, 1970 Home Economics: Fourteen Essays, 1987 Life Is a Miracle, 2000 The Long-Legged House, 2004 Recollected Essays: 1965-1980, 1981 Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, 1992 Standing by Words, 1983 The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, 1971 The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, 1977 What Are People For?, 1990

Fidelity: Five Stories, 1992 Hannah Coulter, 2004 Jayber Crow, 2000 The Memory of Old Jack, 1974 Nathan Coulter, 1960 A Place on Earth, 1967 Remembering, 1988 That Distant Land: The Collected Stories, 2004 Watch with Me and Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch, 1994 The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership, 1986 A World Lost, 1996

The Broken Ground, 1964 Clearing, 1977 Collected Poems: 1951-1982, 1982 The Country of Marriage, 1973 Entries, 1994 Farming: A Hand Book, 1970 Given: New Poems, 2005 Openings, 1968 A Part, 1980 Sabbaths: Poems, 1987 Sayings and Doings, 1975 The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1999 A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 19791997, 1998 The Wheel, 1982

This book was made by Leah Strickman at Washington University in St. Louis for Typography 2. Font family used is Futura, designed by Paul Renner. Paper used is Mohawk Superfine Eggshell in white.