Notes from public school - Day 54

I have two books in front of me.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe.

Hemingway is known for his plain and simple language.

“He had no mysticism about turtles,” he writes in his novel (that was first published in Life Magazine, btw), “although he had gone in turtle boats for many years. He was sorry for them all, even the great trunk backs that were as long as the skiff and weighed a ton. Most people are heartless about turtles because turtle’s heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs.” 

I have such a heart too.

And my feet and hands are like theirs.

Especially after a day of teaching and writing.

Wolfe is known for his elegant and mysterious prose.

I am Team Hemingway.

The plainer and simpler the better for me.

But I cheer for Wolfe.

Maybe it’s because I’m a mystic at heart.

Maybe it’s because we both graduated from UNC Chapel Hill.

Maybe it’s because the singer/song writer Don Williams referenced him on the song “Good Ole Boys Like Me,” a song I heard again and again in my childhood as I laid me down to sleep.

Thomas Wolfe was whispering in my ear today.

“Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door.”

This he writes at the beginning of his novel.

This he spoke to me today.

I found the great forgotten language in the plainest and simplest places today.

In the writing of these words.

In the reds and yellows of fall maple leaves.

In the smiles of my students.

Heaven.