The There There Letter: Whether Man, Wuthering Heights, and Witness Trees
Three things from DAH.
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. Imagining a guiding light in the darking night.
First up this week, Whether Man …
"I'm the Whether Man, not the Weather Man, for after all it's more important to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be" (The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster). This is the most important sentence of my formative years. It ignited a fire, a burning for words and wordplay. It lit a path towards thinking off-kilter, and for questioning the statements of others … statements that assume meaning and intent are clear when they absolutely aren't. My first reaction when receiving any communication (from friend or foe, fanciful, formal, or forceful): Why are they telling me this?
Books That Made Us: The Phantom Tollbooth
Second up this week, Wuthering Heights …
My fascination with the Brontës began long before I read any of their works. Recent brain racking and web searching led me to my early inspiration: Pauline Clarke's Carnegie Medal-winning The Return of the Twelves. It's a low fantasy children's book about toy soldiers that once belonged to the four Brontë children. Then I played Edward Rochester in a junior high school production of Jane Eyre (based on the book by Charlotte Brontë). I was hooked for life. But it's the doomed Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights (by Emily Brontë) that infected me: romanticizing the wild Yorkshire moors and the absolute agonies of love.
Modern thoughts on 19th century literature written by women: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Third up this week, Witness Tree …
I heard part of an NPR Fresh Air review of Kevin Birmingham's new The Sinner and The Saint (which sounds wonderful). A passage was quoted: Dostoevsky, banished to Siberia, brought to tears at the cross that marks the end of Europe and the beginning of Asia. Well, of course that got me thinking about how we mark borders and edges. And then, of course: trees! Their size and relative permanence made them great corner markers. "Witness trees!" I thought. But aren't those bullet-riddled battlefield memorials? Yes, and they're also property corner markers. Big old trees standing witness while we frenetically dance our little lives around them, trying not to slip over the edge.
Silent Witnesses, Old Trees are Hiding in Our Midst
And a bit more:
Fog, by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver’s poem Sometimes …
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. Imagining a guiding light in the darking night.
First up this week, Whether Man …
"I'm the Whether Man, not the Weather Man, for after all it's more important to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be" (The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster). This is the most important sentence of my formative years. It ignited a fire, a burning for words and wordplay. It lit a path towards thinking off-kilter, and for questioning the statements of others … statements that assume meaning and intent are clear when they absolutely aren't. My first reaction when receiving any communication (from friend or foe, fanciful, formal, or forceful): Why are they telling me this?
Books That Made Us: The Phantom Tollbooth
Second up this week, Wuthering Heights …
My fascination with the Brontës began long before I read any of their works. Recent brain racking and web searching led me to my early inspiration: Pauline Clarke's Carnegie Medal-winning The Return of the Twelves. It's a low fantasy children's book about toy soldiers that once belonged to the four Brontë children. Then I played Edward Rochester in a junior high school production of Jane Eyre (based on the book by Charlotte Brontë). I was hooked for life. But it's the doomed Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights (by Emily Brontë) that infected me: romanticizing the wild Yorkshire moors and the absolute agonies of love.
Modern thoughts on 19th century literature written by women: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Third up this week, Witness Tree …
I heard part of an NPR Fresh Air review of Kevin Birmingham's new The Sinner and The Saint (which sounds wonderful). A passage was quoted: Dostoevsky, banished to Siberia, brought to tears at the cross that marks the end of Europe and the beginning of Asia. Well, of course that got me thinking about how we mark borders and edges. And then, of course: trees! Their size and relative permanence made them great corner markers. "Witness trees!" I thought. But aren't those bullet-riddled battlefield memorials? Yes, and they're also property corner markers. Big old trees standing witness while we frenetically dance our little lives around them, trying not to slip over the edge.
Silent Witnesses, Old Trees are Hiding in Our Midst
And a bit more:
Fog, by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
And 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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