Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth - Entry 2

Quote:

“I WAS IN A MONASTERY IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO, high in the mountains near Abiquiu. It was February. Behind the chapel there was an open grave, the red soil mounded up beside it. “Has a brother died?” I asked a monk. “No,” he answered, “but we cannot dig in winter, so we opened this grave ahead of time, just in case.”

 An open grave is an open mouth. It disturbs the soil, throwing the wet cold subsoil to the surface. It exhales all the suggestion of the dark. But a grave is also the place where the foul is made fair. It is the way that flesh returns to the generative womb.

 The grave seems to interrupt the human story. But the fact is that graves are motherly for the Earth. They wrap up the things of time and deliver them back to the cradle. So that the show goes on. So that nothing will stop the stories from being told.”

Chapter: The Soil of Graves (p. 54) Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan

Background:

This was the opening of a chapter that discusses how the dirt of graves are used to give life to various organisms. This is in essence, Logan's main purpose and thesis in writing this book. The underlying message that is in most if not all of his chapters are that dirt is the connection between death and life. Dirt is what completes the circle of life. Things are born, things die, but they all have to do with dirt. Things are born from the soil and when things die, they become part of and fuel the soil. This is Logan's thesis.

When I read this chapter, it occurred to me that this was his thesis. I am not sure why it occurred to me here rather than in any other chapter (as most of them talk about the thesis in one way or another), but it became crystal clear in this chapter. Perhaps it was the fact that it had to do with humans and so I was able to connect to it a little better. Perhaps it was the fact that it reminded me of the grave scene in Hamlet. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but it was at this chapter that I realized his thesis. 

I always agreed that everything decomposed and became part of the soil sooner or later. On a thesis level, I guess I might say that I already knew what Logan was trying to tell me. I did not, however, know all the details and small facts that Logan used to back up his thesis throughout the book. It is these small facts that keeps me interested.