We are back in the Floriday Keys for a few days again. Not going to Key West this time. Just hanging out at the pool and getting some of the best pizza ever.
I found a notebook with a couple pages I had written on and without the context that has long flown out of my mind I picked up and continued and made the story absurd and fun and completely self-unaware. It’s silly and the errors are intentional. Only reason I feel compelled to point that out is because when I used phrases in that way previously there are always comments trying to be "helpful”.
Enjoy Papa!
Papa
I have listened to one Ernest Hemingway novel, unabridged, and now consider myself to be an expert or can at least speak with a peculiar insight on many things.
I recently spent a weekend in Miami Beach and while my loving child and I took most of our meals from room service or the rooftop bistro I felt a deepening spiritual connection to Papa Hemingway that - to me- feels more truly authentic than any amount of academic research could or the academy could provide.
I have now drank 7 Mexican Cokes from the hotel minibar and have walked the streets of Miami Beach slightly beyond the drag where my boutique hotel is. I walk the streets of Miami Beach and wonder which of the buildings I am looking at now Pop Ernest also gazed upon with wonder. Which buildings are old enough for him to have walked past if he was ever in this part of town.
One and one half years after my first trip to Miami Beach I am back in the Florida Keys - Marathon to be exact - for the second time in seven months. In another time, that was probably the frequency with which pop Hemmingway shew his face in his favorite Paris brasserie and would qualify him as a regular of the joint. Not so in these days. I placed a pickup order for pizza and a sandwich. Lemonade and unsweetened tea for my loving child and loving wife, respectively.
Upon entering the establishment there was not a hint of recognition at my arrival. I admit it stung but such are these days. I returned with the pizza, lemonade, and unsweetened tea for my loving child and loving wife. Bourbon for myself to drink alone outside on the screened-in patio and write increasingly illegibly in varying Moleskins. Just as Father Ernest did.
It’s right there on the label. In the marketing copy. This precious Moleskine, acquired without peril, at the local chain bookstore for $12.95, it was the notebook of Van Gogh, Picasso, Hemingway, and Chatwin. That puts me in pretty good creative company, right?
I don’t fish and cannot get to Cuba for the afternoon. I don’t own a boat. I do have a lot of pencils and Moleskines and a portable Hermes typewriter like he had.
That’s something, right?
If I overdramatize my experience in a vacation rental house in a part of the Keys he had to pass through on his way to Key West that counts as lived research, right?
Alas, my peace is broken. My loving child requires water before she will give in to slumber and I must deliver it to my loving wife to administer. Proving I am a loving provider for them.
I think I have a pretty good handle on this whole Hemingway thing. I may need to listen to another audio book to solidify my standing in the online-only scholar community. Some of these message boards can be rough.