The There There Letter: Weltschmerz, Why Bother, and Witness Tree
Three things from DAH.
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. Lately, I mostly read and write. My ambitions are to pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it.
First up this week, Weltschmerz …
It's been a rugged week (and longer) where I live. Triple-digit temperatures (Fahrenheit! don't panic Celsius users), smoky skies, ashfall (from nearby wildfires) -- these in addition to the current pandemic and political dramedy. It's enough to give a body Weltschmerz. Which I was confronting daily even before my three dogs and I were confined inside by … well, everything. I think by naming the thing, even with a foreign word, I have a better chance of holding it at bay. Labeling the demon helps me manage it.
How to Tell Whether You've Got Angst, Ennui, or Weltschmerz
Second up this week, Why Bother …
Already feeling quite Weltschmerzy from 2019 I'm pleased in 2020 to have stumbled upon the book "Why Bother? Discover the Desire for What's Next" by Jennifer Louden. So far this year has been a veritable Weltschmerz-fest. Louden's book is my emotional life preserver: a lively, readable, supportive, and practical guide to dealing with all the schmerz. I confess to a bit of schadenfreude reading "Why Bother?" because some personal situations shared by the author were much more desperate than my own. I read my way through Louden's gentle steps to bothering: leaving things behind, easing in, settling, desiring, becoming by doing, being seen. And landed with a thought shared by one of Louden's retreat participants: "Have mercy on yourself. You'll always lose your way, give up, doubt yourself. It's inevitable. So don't be surprised by it. Always begin again."
10 Things to Do When You Don’t Want to Do Anything
(it's actually 11 things because the list contains two number 10s … the best recommendation is the number 10 that says Read A Book -- read "Why Bother?" I say)
Third up this week, Witness Tree …
I meant to write about Woodland, the small city where I live. But I was distracted by a very cool book I recently acquired. "Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape," edited by Barry Lopez and including contributions from four dozen writers. It's like a big geographical love-letter-lexicon about this land. I looked up woodland (not my city, but a wooded area … it's that kind of book) and lost myself thinking about a word on the opposite page: Witness Tree (entry contributed by Robert Michael Pyle). A witness tree might stand in to mark a property corner that couldn't otherwise be marked "because the true point lies on a cliff or in a swamp, stream, or lakebed." I thought about how we must identify and mark things in our own lives, even when the exact thing can't be perfectly pinned down. The Witness Tree entry in "Home Ground" didn't disappoint, closing with words from Robert Frost, impressing that a Witness Tree allows truth to be "established and borne out,/though circumcised by dark and doubt." I feel like we're all seeking to locate or plant a few witness trees, these days.
Names we’ve held on to "to make ourselves abiding and real"
And a little bit extra …
SOMETIMES, by Sheenagh Pugh
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
That's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's poem "Sometimes" …
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. Lately, I mostly read and write. My ambitions are to pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it.
First up this week, Weltschmerz …
It's been a rugged week (and longer) where I live. Triple-digit temperatures (Fahrenheit! don't panic Celsius users), smoky skies, ashfall (from nearby wildfires) -- these in addition to the current pandemic and political dramedy. It's enough to give a body Weltschmerz. Which I was confronting daily even before my three dogs and I were confined inside by … well, everything. I think by naming the thing, even with a foreign word, I have a better chance of holding it at bay. Labeling the demon helps me manage it.
How to Tell Whether You've Got Angst, Ennui, or Weltschmerz
Second up this week, Why Bother …
Already feeling quite Weltschmerzy from 2019 I'm pleased in 2020 to have stumbled upon the book "Why Bother? Discover the Desire for What's Next" by Jennifer Louden. So far this year has been a veritable Weltschmerz-fest. Louden's book is my emotional life preserver: a lively, readable, supportive, and practical guide to dealing with all the schmerz. I confess to a bit of schadenfreude reading "Why Bother?" because some personal situations shared by the author were much more desperate than my own. I read my way through Louden's gentle steps to bothering: leaving things behind, easing in, settling, desiring, becoming by doing, being seen. And landed with a thought shared by one of Louden's retreat participants: "Have mercy on yourself. You'll always lose your way, give up, doubt yourself. It's inevitable. So don't be surprised by it. Always begin again."
10 Things to Do When You Don’t Want to Do Anything
(it's actually 11 things because the list contains two number 10s … the best recommendation is the number 10 that says Read A Book -- read "Why Bother?" I say)
Third up this week, Witness Tree …
I meant to write about Woodland, the small city where I live. But I was distracted by a very cool book I recently acquired. "Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape," edited by Barry Lopez and including contributions from four dozen writers. It's like a big geographical love-letter-lexicon about this land. I looked up woodland (not my city, but a wooded area … it's that kind of book) and lost myself thinking about a word on the opposite page: Witness Tree (entry contributed by Robert Michael Pyle). A witness tree might stand in to mark a property corner that couldn't otherwise be marked "because the true point lies on a cliff or in a swamp, stream, or lakebed." I thought about how we must identify and mark things in our own lives, even when the exact thing can't be perfectly pinned down. The Witness Tree entry in "Home Ground" didn't disappoint, closing with words from Robert Frost, impressing that a Witness Tree allows truth to be "established and borne out,/though circumcised by dark and doubt." I feel like we're all seeking to locate or plant a few witness trees, these days.
Names we’ve held on to "to make ourselves abiding and real"
And a little bit extra …
SOMETIMES, by Sheenagh Pugh
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
That's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's poem "Sometimes" …
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
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