Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | The Horn Book Magazine

Tink and Wittgenstein: or, the correspondence between things.

Article Excerpt
One sunny Saturday morning, my wife and I were reading in bed with a fresh pot of tea near at hand. "What's that?" Amanda asked. I looked up to see a dazzling light, about the size of a fairy, hovering on the wall opposite the bed.

"It's Tinker Bell."

"Hello, Tink," she said.

I made Tink do a little dance by tilting my wristwatch to the sun. I remembered my father tricking me in just this way. He was good at making her tremble as if she was in one of her moods--her famous fits of pique. Then she would dart off across the room, probably to give Wendy a pinch. I liked this idea, as a kid, since my next older sister was named Wendy (I call her Annie Oakley in the Rex Zero books), and I needed all the help I could get with her.

Amanda smiled and went back to reading, as did I. But some moments later, she said, "Oh, look, Tink's discovered Wittgenstein."

On the wall above the dresser there is a framed piece of art that Amanda, a calligrapher and book artist, made--a piece of several spreads of fine Japanese paper featuring a quote by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein:

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Sure enough, there was a splash of light on the glass. I made Tinker Bell move from left to right, as if she was reading the quotation, letter by letter. She wasn't all that smart a fairy. "Common," Peter called her; she had come by her name because she was responsible for mending the pots and kettles. We laughed to think of what Tink would make of Wittgenstein's sobering thought. Then Amanda went back to her reading, but I didn't. Couldn't. My mind was...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!