Responses up until Hands-
Sherwood Anderson was an author that controlled the first and last expression through timeless thoughts, events and dreams. Throughout his life his disciples and many people left him, and he could just remember what it used to be like. A memory is almost like a dream in the way that it is us, and how we want to see it. We forget things and people and what they have done for us, and the only way to remember is to record it.
"That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth." Page 23 In a timeless atmosphere that he creates through his writing, the world can always be young while still growing old like the writer. The writer an old man, but has youth within him. Youth maybe a new knowledge, innocence in the way that he is confused and sees these people these guides, these mentors. When we are young people are always there for us, guiding us, but as we grow older we might become that guidance for someone else, but the writer is an old man and still needs to have that path although he is in deep jungle.
Hands and eyes seem to create our world. Hands, as the first realization that Anderson was a writer, which fits well in a way. Wing Biddlebaum had the seeds to plant the clover although others, the yellow mustard weeds, took over. Anderson had the clover, ideas, to plant but they just wouldn’t grow because they didn’t have a solid factual base and they just flowed around, but might still look good. What we see and what we remember and what we create are all different. Sometimes we create something new though, but the way it really happened wasn’t remember and wont be know because we cant get the idea recorded and then it is lost, by becoming a new memory and changing, although we tried to explain it the first time.
Hands response-
I thought at the end of the story Hands I thought it was interesting how Wing Biddlebaum's hands were described under the light picking up the crumbs. Anderson said Biddlebaum's fingers were dashing in and out of the light of the lamp. I thought of heaven and lightning when reading this. His fingers were dashing in and out of the light of heaven, as if it were lightning. A touch of a miracle, only being there for a split second, as we are a miracle only living on Earth for seems to be a split second, but only knowing it was there by the sound of the thunder being left behind. The thunder is the mark we make on the world. Although never had never felt connected or part of his new city even though he had lived there for 20 years, he had a different connection of electricity that he couldn’t control. A beautiful connection although he would always have to carry around the crashing thunder, the after fact, with him as an extra weight wherever he went.
