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DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. "One of the ways we humans organize and make sense of our experience is through the telling of stories" (Lisa Wells, Believers, 2021). The photo below is from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of Into the Woods (2014). 

First up this week: TheThereThere … 
"… there is no there there." Gertrude Stein wrote those words about her childhood in Oakland, California (Everybody's Autobiography, 1937). She was reflecting on the disappearance of her family’s home, torn down to be replaced by an office park. Her words resonate with me when I consider essence of place, and the people and stories of places. I seized upon thetherethere some years ago, as a way to think about the essential value and appeal of terroir in the world beyond wine.

Second up this week, Terroir …
It's a French word. First known use in 1846. Merriam-Webster: "the combination of factors including soil, climate, and sunlight that gives wine grapes their distinctive character." So, nothing to do with any war on terror typographical error (if you were confused). I seek the human side of terroir, too. The soul of the place beyond the physical world. Terroir combined with genius loci, really. Back to the dictionary for genius loci (usage dates back to the 16th Century): "spirit of a place" and "the cluster of associations identified with a place." And more, for me … How and why the essential essence matters. That's where I'll find the there there. 

Third up this week, Tantalize …
And the kernel, the core, often seems just out of reach. Tantalizingly close and so tempting to simplify and leap to conclusions. Stephen Sondheim loved tantalize's teasing notion. From West Side Story:

Or from Into the Woods:

I'm always after the there there, in everything. And I do agonize that I'm often dissatisfied settling for what my modest mind and soul can reach. 

A book I'm reading now … 
Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World, by Lisa Wells. 
An impulse buy this week at Point Reyes Books (such a lovely shop). This book was a selection for their "Thinking Like a Mountain" book club. It was a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. "Believers … grapples with the question of how to go forward in the shadow of endings ― not only our own, but the endings of species and ecosystems, of cultures and of language … The question is not of what we face but how we can face it bravely and creatively" (Lydia Millet, Los Angeles Times)

And a bit more: 

Home is So Sad, by Philip Larkin

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.


And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's Sometimes