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    Greenhouses, Lighthouses
    Greenhouses, Lighthouses
    Greenhouses, Lighthouses
    Ebook90 pages36 minutes

    Greenhouses, Lighthouses

    By Tung-Hui Hu

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    About this ebook

    • Tung-Hui Hu holds a PhD in Film from the University of California, Berkeley.
    • Currnetly teaches at University of Michigan.
    • Co-creator of "The Last Time You Cried," an art project that translated human emotions into computer-generated poems. Check out more here: http://www.digitalculture.org/news/digital-practitioner-interview-tung-hui-hu-on-the-last-time-you-cried-project
    • All of Tung-Hui's books have won awards:
    • James D. Phelan Literary Award for Greenhouses, Lighthouses
    • Avery Hopwood Award for The Book of Motion
    • Eisner Prize for Mine
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateMay 4, 2013
    ISBN9781619320369
    Greenhouses, Lighthouses

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      Book preview

      Greenhouses, Lighthouses - Tung-Hui Hu

      INVISIBLE GREEN

      Commanders of vehicles in distress are desired to make their usual signals.

      Rooms and bed are provided for shipwrecked seamen…

      Dead bodies cast on the shore are decently buried gratis.

      The New Seaman’s Guide and Coaster’s Companion, 1809

      1

      In 1772, the twenty-six-year-old violinmaker Henry Whiteside began to build a lighthouse on a pile of rocks twenty miles off the coast of Pembrokeshire, Wales, called the Smalls. His design was unusual; the light perched on top of eight oak piers like the head of a stiff-legged octopus. Rather than making a solid base, Whiteside reasoned, he would let the force of the waves pass through the structure. But when the waves did so, the living quarters swayed violently; one visitor reported that a full bucket of water was half empty by the time he left. The force of the storm made each thing—bucket, glass, stove, table—resonant; it bent the lighthouse, shaping it into an instrument of music.

      The violinmaker began his design by setting his compass point at N 51º43'17, W 5º38'47. Then he drew a circle, 3 miles out, the distance of cannon shot and therefore the distance of territorial waters. Another circle, 4 miles out, representing the reach of the Smalls’ pellucid green beacon: he drew this intermittent light as a series of green dashes. A third circle, 12 miles, thick line: a brighter white light to warn of rocks. A series of concentric circles to represent the ocean, with the lighthouse fixed at the center. But a final circle should be drawn 40 feet out, representing a lighthouse keeper’s circuit around the gallery railing in winter. He is at the center of the center; the world comes to him, wrecks itself on his shores.

      2

      They are out of rations; they are still waiting for lime juice and pickled vegetables. The owners are cheap; the resupply ships are late. Why, then, the rumor that lighthouse keepers at the last stages of a decline… are prodigiously fat when they leave their posts? A few years’ duty at the Smalls, so they say, wards off consumption, breaks fever, and reverses wasting disease. How can the meanest personalities turn into jolly, good-spirited fellows; how can scrofulous, emaciated men walk in, and corpulent doubles walk out?

      As one keeper, formerly a watchmaker, writes, this work is rusting a fellow’s life away. The rotating prisms operate through a clockwork mechanism—he knows how to wind and fix them; the lighthouse is simply a large watch to maintain and repair. But what he belatedly realizes as he is oiling the surface of the gearwork is that he is no longer working on a watch. He is the rusted mechanism standing at attention each hour, at twilight and at dawn; in the room full of whale oil and sperm candle, he is the one needing the grease. With no rations left, he eats the oil intended for the candles. Whale oil, rich as cod-liver oil, rich with vitamins, makes the keeper look almost healthy. Food for both stomach and eye. Stink of half-eaten light.

      The surface of a glass photograph

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