parental guidance suggested
My father and I are debating back and forth, via email, about a saying — “neither here nor there.” It’s a popular saying and one he came across again while reading Jim Harrison’s latest book of poetry (Harrison is an author we both love). In fact I get my love of language, of words and of reading from my parents and particularly my father, whose favorite pastime is either reading or talking of books. We ship books back and forth — he and I and my mother and the last book Dad and I both read and discussed at some length was Friedman’s The World is Flat, which I am still going back to and thinking about.
Here was my father’s email:
Dear Professor,
While reading Jim Harrison’s new book of poems, “Saving daylight, I came across the expression “Neither Here Nor There”. After thinking about it, it occured to me that if something is neither here nor there, where is it. I knew then that I needed help from someone in higher education, at least someone with their Doctorate and of course I know someone who fits the bill.
So now, where is something that is neither here nor there?
A confused father!
P.S. They are coming for me soon.
And my response –
Hmmm, I am not sure. I suppose my answer would be — does something need to have a physical location in order to exist? In other words, something can be neither here nor there but still be someThing.
Your danadoc.
p.s.s — if they come for you, i am surely next.
In thinking through this exchange, I realize how lucky I am to have this father and these kind of conversations. He did so much to shape who I am and who I’ve become, as a thinker and a learner and a professor. Sometimes it’s like he’s in the classroom with me, ghostteaching or something as the questions I ask are the ones he raised me on — why does this matter, how can I learn about my world, where are the places I can make a difference, what are the big questions that surround me?
July 9th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Dr. Cammack:
I am getting ready to write my “letter to Dr. Coles” and I was just searching around and wanted to respond to what you’ve written about your father. I have the same relationship with my father. He is a reader and one of my first memories of us together is going to a branch library that was closing. I remember him handing me cardboard boxes and telling me to fill them up! The books were mostly paperbacks and probably cost no more than a quarter each but I remember feeling like they were boxes filled with treasure. Growing up, my father would often direct me toward titles and I remember him introducing me to DIckens and Bradbury and Sinclair and Joyce. I called him today and told him about The Call of Stories which I think he would enjoy. We discussed that although I read many of the titles Coles discussed in high school, it is time for me to revisit them and see what they are saying to me now. My father is eager to do this with me! I truly treasure these literary conversations with my father as we use them as a foray into our thoughts and beliefs about life. As I told you on the first night of class, my father has cancer now. It seems like ever sense the onset of this disease he has become more of a reader than ever (which reminds me of Fermi’s piles of books and magazines in the hospital). Right now he is tackling historical books and biographies…as he put it…things he always wanted to understand. When talking about Coles’ book I read him some titles from the Index and he had read many of them. My father never went to college. He worked for thirty years as a mechanic for an airline and is now a school custodian. I asked him who pointed him in the direction of those titles and he said it was his mother. How fortunate we are to have these literary soulmates as parents.
July 9th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
We really are. This must be terrifying, to have him sick. My hopes and thoughts are with you and him.
Dana
July 11th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
You make me jealous. I don’t share such a relationship with my father, or anyone in my family for that matter. Your father is lucky that you articulate how much he means to you.
July 11th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Funny that I put it on here, which he never reads, rather than telling him, isn’t it?
I will say while we have this close relationship intellectually, in the complicated web of fathers and daughters the other things aren’t always so simple.
July 16th, 2006 at 1:11 am
hgiuyesaf
August 25th, 2006 at 2:40 am
Dear Dr. C.,
Been pondering your dad’s query. What about this possibility? Think it could be a literary allusion to Mark 13: 21: “If someone should say, ‘Here is the Messiah!’ or ‘There he is!’ don’t believe it.” [He is neither "here" nor "there."] Could the allusion refer to something not able to be pinned down; something deceptive or irrelevant; something not grounded in reality? Hmmm…
The context for Mark’s statement is the end times, clarified in Luke 21: 8: Jesus replied: Don’t be fooled by those who will come and claim to be me. They will say, “I am Christ!” and “Now is the time!” But don’t follow them.
It’s totally fascinating to me how many everyday expressions have Scriptural roots. Think this could be one of them?
PEACE! bk