Aldwinckle, Eric, Letter, 17 March 1944

Letter, Eric Aldwinckle dated March 17, 1944.
Description: 
Letter to Harry Somers

Tabs

Case Study: 
Creative Dialogue Across the Ocean: Eric Aldwinckle’s Letters to Harry Somers
Creator: 
Aldwinckle, Eric
Source: 
letter
Date: 
17 March 1944
Collection/Fonds: 
Contributer: 
McMaster University Libraries
Rights: 
Copyright, public domain: McMaster University owns the rights to the archival copy of the digital image in TIFF format. Reproduced with the kind permission of Margaret Bridgman.

Identifier: 
00001593
Language: 
eng
Type: 
image
Format: 
jpg
Transcript: 

Mar 17 1944
Dear Harry,
After posting my letter to you of this same date (?) at noon I went up 12000 ft and would like to try and translate it to you as much as words will permit.
The day appears to be sunny. Haze on the ground left from a morning fog. Up above small strata cumulae clouds drift in a seeming layer of one level, showing a blue sky in the spaces between.
Snorting across the field like an angry beast attacking a foe we become suddenly reborn. The roar becomes the comfortable hum of stability and the land moves gently past, slower and slower, smaller and smaller, as unreal as it ever will look from this dimension.
Familiar patterns now, the brown rectangles jigsawed with green; bas relief copse of trees in less geometric pattern but with the same sandpapered edges of inlay. Meticulous rule and pencil furrows of farming. Scratchings and etchings geometric. Pink brown, sand brown, umber, green. Soft, soft, soft. A model village beautifully hand carved; tiny orange vermillion roofs painted and modelled with the most scrupulous attention to minute detail.