what to do? part 3

The American Puritans were fond of making anagrams out of a person's name. Apparently they thought that if a pious phrase could be found in that name, it was a sign that they were one of the elect, and would end up in Heaven. I became interested in the Puritans years ago when I realized that I had some Puritanical impulses of my own, so I began making my own anagrams. The first one I tried was out of "American Puritan" which generated several interesting phrases, my favorite being the oddly poignant, "I am crap in nature."

I reverted to this anagram strategy early on in my thinking about this commission, beginning with the phrase, "The Human Situation" which is the heading for the mandatory curriculum for all Freshman Honors College students. This generated nothing of value, producing nonsense phrases like, "Hi! I heat a mutton sun," and "It in a nut, thou shame."

At about this time I pulled from the pile of books on my night stand, a brilliant book by Tom Phillips called A Humument. A Humument is a Victorian novel titled A Human Document that Phillips "treated" (and continues to treat) by obscuring and connecting letters and words to create an entirely new narrative which bristles with a logic and wisdom all its own. I've admired this book since finding it 10 or so years ago, and I thought I'd take a look at some works in the Honors College curriculum which I could reorder in some fashion. I decided to first try anagramming a phrase, and for reasons I don't remember, I started with Dante's Inferno and the line, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Fortunately, I could only squeeze out the odd and worthless phrase, "When here a bone, a needy hell, a trope." For twelve days I tried finding meaningful phrases out of various Honors College references, with no luck.

Finally, on April Fool's Day I wrote in my sketchbook, "Easy and Free/Determined and Bound," not knowing this was the beginning of finding a solution for the commission.