of his red sports coupe, with a young
woman beside him and a surfboard neatly balanced on the roof. He wants to pass, but there is precious little room on the narrow
road and nothing I can do. He pulls out across the double yellow line, blaring his horn, and makes an obscene gesture as he
races by, nearly taking off my front fender as he cuts back in. I am badly shaken.
A mile or so farther along, I turn into a side road and park on a grassy shoulder overlooking a saltmarsh preserve. I sit
there for a while, quietly collecting myself, studying the eucalyptus forest in the distance, and, closer in, the coastal
estuary, the brackish ponds and mud flats. When I am sufficiently calmed down, I string my field glasses around my neck and
enter this tranquil habitat, this sanctuary for all manner of wildlife, including me.
I stop on a wooden footbridge that spans a narrow waterway and listen to the harsh buzz of a marsh wren hidden in the reeds.
A snowy egret wades in the shoals, spearing prey with his sharp black bill. Bank swallows twist and turn in miraculous flight
over my head, catching insects on the wing. Cinnamon teal take off from the muddy embankment—and far off, a blackshouldered
kite perches silently on a post and waits.
All these species, and so many more, dwell together in this one fertile oasis without getting in each other’s way. Yes, the
egret feeds on frogs and fish, the swallows devour mosquitoes, and the kite kills snakes and rodents whenever it can. Sometimes
the peregrine falcon swoops down and snatches a duck out of the sky. But those are not acts of cruelty; they are the way of
survival in a natural world. What is cruel is the unnatural way we humans behave toward each other.
I think again of the young man in the red sports coupe, of his insulting gesture and his infuriating attempt to force me off
the road. I think, too, of the young woman at his side, laughing at his recklessness as if it were a virtue, and of how that
spurs him on. Each time she laughs, his foot presses harder on the gas pedal and the car spurts ahead, gaining on the car
in front, which he must pass, because if he doesn’t, the woman at his side may start to wonder if he really is the man he
wants her to think he is.
I wonder if he knows where he’s heading, or how, or why—this young man rushing toward his grave. He’s so sure he’s veering
south, past farms of artichokes, past fields of sheep grazing on the barren slopes above the sea. He’s so certain that he
is the center of the universe, that he is in control of all he surveys, when in fact he is no more than a flyspeck on a planet
hurtling through the sky.
When I was young, I read a poem called “This Dim and Ptolemaic Man,” by John Peale Bishop, and the lines come back to me now.
In his poem, Bishop depicts a farmer who saves enough money to buy a rattly Ford and how he feels “motion spurt beneath his
heels” as he drives hell-bent down the road:
Morning light obscures the stars.
He swerves avoiding other cars,
Wheels with the road, does not discern
He eastward goes at every turn
Nor how his aged limbs are hurled
Through all the motions of the world,
How wild past farms, past ricks, past trees,
He perishes toward Hercules.
For a long time after I read the poem, the line “He eastward goes at every turn” kept reeling through my brain, an enigma.
Why is the farmer going eastward? At last the answer dawned on me. He is going eastward because the earth is turning eastward;
he is a traveler on the spinning planet, even if he is too self-absorbed in his new-bought car to feel himself being “hurled
through all the motions of the world.”
The poem intrigues me because of the title: the way the poet joins “dim and Ptolemaic” to describe the egocentric nature of
man. Ptolemy, the ancient astronomer, declared that earth was a motionless body and that sun, moon, and planets revolved around
it at varying
woman beside him and a surfboard neatly balanced on the roof. He wants to pass, but there is precious little room on the narrow
road and nothing I can do. He pulls out across the double yellow line, blaring his horn, and makes an obscene gesture as he
races by, nearly taking off my front fender as he cuts back in. I am badly shaken.
A mile or so farther along, I turn into a side road and park on a grassy shoulder overlooking a saltmarsh preserve. I sit
there for a while, quietly collecting myself, studying the eucalyptus forest in the distance, and, closer in, the coastal
estuary, the brackish ponds and mud flats. When I am sufficiently calmed down, I string my field glasses around my neck and
enter this tranquil habitat, this sanctuary for all manner of wildlife, including me.
I stop on a wooden footbridge that spans a narrow waterway and listen to the harsh buzz of a marsh wren hidden in the reeds.
A snowy egret wades in the shoals, spearing prey with his sharp black bill. Bank swallows twist and turn in miraculous flight
over my head, catching insects on the wing. Cinnamon teal take off from the muddy embankment—and far off, a blackshouldered
kite perches silently on a post and waits.
All these species, and so many more, dwell together in this one fertile oasis without getting in each other’s way. Yes, the
egret feeds on frogs and fish, the swallows devour mosquitoes, and the kite kills snakes and rodents whenever it can. Sometimes
the peregrine falcon swoops down and snatches a duck out of the sky. But those are not acts of cruelty; they are the way of
survival in a natural world. What is cruel is the unnatural way we humans behave toward each other.
I think again of the young man in the red sports coupe, of his insulting gesture and his infuriating attempt to force me off
the road. I think, too, of the young woman at his side, laughing at his recklessness as if it were a virtue, and of how that
spurs him on. Each time she laughs, his foot presses harder on the gas pedal and the car spurts ahead, gaining on the car
in front, which he must pass, because if he doesn’t, the woman at his side may start to wonder if he really is the man he
wants her to think he is.
I wonder if he knows where he’s heading, or how, or why—this young man rushing toward his grave. He’s so sure he’s veering
south, past farms of artichokes, past fields of sheep grazing on the barren slopes above the sea. He’s so certain that he
is the center of the universe, that he is in control of all he surveys, when in fact he is no more than a flyspeck on a planet
hurtling through the sky.
When I was young, I read a poem called “This Dim and Ptolemaic Man,” by John Peale Bishop, and the lines come back to me now.
In his poem, Bishop depicts a farmer who saves enough money to buy a rattly Ford and how he feels “motion spurt beneath his
heels” as he drives hell-bent down the road:
Morning light obscures the stars.
He swerves avoiding other cars,
Wheels with the road, does not discern
He eastward goes at every turn
Nor how his aged limbs are hurled
Through all the motions of the world,
How wild past farms, past ricks, past trees,
He perishes toward Hercules.
For a long time after I read the poem, the line “He eastward goes at every turn” kept reeling through my brain, an enigma.
Why is the farmer going eastward? At last the answer dawned on me. He is going eastward because the earth is turning eastward;
he is a traveler on the spinning planet, even if he is too self-absorbed in his new-bought car to feel himself being “hurled
through all the motions of the world.”
The poem intrigues me because of the title: the way the poet joins “dim and Ptolemaic” to describe the egocentric nature of
man. Ptolemy, the ancient astronomer, declared that earth was a motionless body and that sun, moon, and planets revolved around
it at varying
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