air gets thinner

I could tell you about some of the things I’ve discarded but that wouldn’t help you because you must choose your own, or rather not choose them but let them be inflicted on and off you. This is the point of the narrowing-down process. And gradually, as the air gets thinner as you climb a mountain, these things will stand forth in a relief all their own–the look of belonging. It is a marvelous job to do, and it is enough just to approximate it. Things will do the rest. Only then will the point of not having everything become apparent, and it will flash on you with such dexterity and terribleness that you will wonder how you lived before–as though a valley hundreds of miles in length and full of orchards and all sorts of benevolent irregularities of landscape were suddenly to open at your feet, just as you told yourself you could not climb a step higher.

J.A., “The New Spirit,” p312

It makes me happy about the mild deprivation I’m feeling lately in material goods. No camera, no cell phone, no broadband, no laptop, no new car, no home improvements. I think about getting these things every day, but I’m resisting, infused with a stubborn, almost subversive anti-consumerism.

I love the joy – “marvelous job to do” – and the generosity – “enough just to approximate it.”

I like the turning over of effort to things – “Things will do the rest.” Yeah, things! I’m tickled by this mysterious agency of things, hard at work, doing their marvelous jobs.

I like the unexpected adjectival nouns describing “flash” – dexterity and terribleness.

I love the sense of perspective offered by using the landscape as the metaphor and the sense of breathlessness and exertion offered by using mountain climbing as a metaphor.

There are so many things to like about this passage. I haven’t even scratched the surface. And this prose poem is really long! And there are two more long ones in this book!