The Unseen Giant

A few postings ago I used the words "unseen giant" to describe the origin of force that runs the world. The words are lifted directly from a John Updike passage that I've always been in love with--savored. The passage comes from the short story, A Sandstone Farmhouse, that I read in a collection of his short stories in the book The Afterlife. I'm completely new to blogging and fairly new to expressing thoughts in writing. So, when I read the next day that John Updike had passed away I couldn't help think of the timing. And thinking of the unseen force that caught up with him.

(Actually, in checking the passage, Updike refers to the "invisible giant..." At least I used a good synonym.)

I've always felt the passage is a beautiful metaphor about effort, time, and the ultimate inevitability of things. It explains the Almighty without tracts of text. I like brevity. It stays with me. It's like the end of A River Runs Through It, Norman Mclean's elegy to life and fly fishing.

Updike equates the steady subtraction of a pile of stones to the subtraction of years.

"...eventually the entire mountain will be taken away. On the same principle, an invisible giant, removing only one day at a time, will eventually dispose of an entire life."

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