Flight

Something about reading Hemingway makes me peevish.

I picked up A Farewell to Arms again--haven't read it in about five years, and it's been a year since I read For Whom the Bell Tolls. I have been so amazed at how fantastic the writing is. It makes me want to sit down and write for an entire day. The simplicity of the style just draws me in and makes me overconfident.

It also gives me the urge to binge drink and eat hunks of meat and cheese.

I read that in 1954 he won the Nobel prize for Literature and in 1961 he committed suicide, and I just can't get that straight in my head--I can't get it to make sense. I mean, this writing is so gifted and powerful that it is inspiring and motivating, even with its nihilist undertones. the dialog is sometimes wooden and the female characters are underdeveloped and flat.

On to my secret.

Have you ever heard of the term "personal myth"? It's often used in describing teenagers and how they feel magically protected from harm. Well, I wonder if I don't harbor a secret personal myth--that all this crap that I've lived through must pay off in the end in some extraordinary way. Like, if I find myself forty years from now sitting on a duct-taped barcalounger eating a tuna fish sandwich on a TV tray and bitching about how hot it is outside, that life won't have been worthwhile. Like I'm biding my time until my story matures and circumstances explode into some exciting story with huge significance to mankind.

Part of my personal myth is that I share a birthday with Ernest Hemingway, and I somehow feel that this is significant. There, it's out. Fran says that's just way too much pressure to put on myself--it actually probably demotivates me...

But I just can't sit and write all day like I wish I could. I've got my story sketched out and waiting for me to flesh out.

Last week I was driving through downtown Dallas. Clouds came overhead and everything was grey (I always spell this word with an "e" because I nearly got expelled from 8th grade over this alternative spelling--the teacher counted it wrong and I threw an increasingly violent hissy fit, calling one girl a "bitch" and then getting sent to the principal's office). I noticed a building with gothic architecture and threw open my notebook on the passenger's seat, scribbling the name of the building so I could look it up later.

Then I resolved to get my camera, clear off the flash card, and take half of a day to walk through the city, photographing interesting buildings, fountains, and structures. There is a beautiful sculpture of a cattle drive, adjacent to the oldest cemetery in town, with twenty or thrity cattle and several cowboys on horseback cascading down a hillside, representing the cattle drives of over 100 years ago so prominent in this region of the country. Courthouses, skyscrapers, quirky buildings---I got excited about the project and then got tired of the idea before I hit the next red light. I knew I would never do it.

Without wanting to raise alarm, I kind of see what happened to Hemingway--his personal myth was unatttainable. He had to put down the tuna sandwich, get off the barcalounger, and do something about it.

The secret seems to be contentment, being real, enjoying life, having good relationships. Either that or really kicking some ass in life and doing something significant--one or the other.