I was just beginning to think about a weekly tree, when Gary drew my attention to a book he loves and was now reading for the second time--Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Flight To Arras from 1942.
He reminded me that while Saint-Ex (as Gary refers to him affectionately) is best known as the author-illustrator of The Little Prince, his far greater achievement lies in his brilliant novels about his life as a pilot--especially as a fighter pilot in his Flight To Arras, a book my husband has always regarded as both the greatest anti-war novel and the greatest anti-bureaucratic novel ever written.
"Listen," he said this morning, "this is the kind of thing Saint-Ex thinks while flying at 30,000 feet over enemy territory," and he read me following:
"There is a serenity that is higher than the pronouncements of the intelligence. There is a thing which pierces and governs us and which cannot be grasped by the intelligence.
A tree has no language. We are a tree. There are truths which are evident, though not put into words...."
