On ‘seeing’  and ‘hearing’

Q: Why is the present tense, not the past, used in this sentence: “I hear you’re leaving the country”? And why are “see” and “hear” now dynamic, not stative, on TV news? Grammar books say you can’t use progressive tenses with stative verbs, but I often hear reporters say things like “We are seeing a forest in flames.” A: The verbs “see” and “hear” can express either states or actions. As stative verbs, one “sees” (perceives with the eyes) a rainbow or “hears” (perceives with the ears) thunder. As action, or dynamic, verbs, “see” and “hear” have many other senses: “See” can mean to be a spectator (“I’m seeing Hamlet next week”); to understand (“He could see what Rhonda meant”); to experience (“I don’t want to see another hurricane”); to meet (“The doctor is seeing patients now”); to visit (“I’m seeing the Eiffel Tower tomorrow”), and so on. “Hear” can mean to take up a legal issue (“The judge is hearing evidence next week”); to pay attention (“He never hears what I say”): to be…