When I was in college, as a perk of being in a small honors program, I had the privilege of working with a Hemingway scholar; someone who had not only written extensively on Hemingway his Lost Generation tribe members, but who knew the Hemingways personally.
As an English major, this group of eclectic expatriates became the subject of great fascination and admiration for me. From the texts my Professor assigned to the anecdotal richness she contributed, I decided to focus the majority of my studies on this Lost Generation, even composing my thesis as a cubist piece through writing.
As a class trip, the five of us in my honors class were led on a special tour of The Barnes Foundation (when it was still in Merion) and she told us about the paintings, the artists, the gallery and the placement of pieces; she told us about Gertrude Stein’s salon; She showed us a Cezanne landscape and told us that it was Hemingway’s aim to write like Cezanne would paint with the light that shone in between the trees; that it was what was not there that was more important than what was. I will never forget that lesson, about looking for what is in the space in between the objects, rather than just at the objects themselves. Hemingway, my favorite, mastered that, in his elegant sparseness.
Today I was overwhelmed by the beauty of nature; the light between the trees took my breath away, as the world was filled with white.
Layer upon layer of white.
Today was slow and quiet and still in many ways, as if the world stopped at the feet of the falling snow.
It gave me a second to look, to notice, what was between the trees.
The light between the trees.
511 Ever After 