What Mr. Hemingway Said

[GameChristopher]

What Mr. Hemingway Said,

-Christopher James Teuton.

 

 

Ernest Hemingway was the one who said it. At least, he was the first. But I’m not going to tell you what he said until the end of this article.

In Hollywood, they would call it a ‘tension-builder’.

Cal and I, we argued about it sometimes. Him wearing a gold sequined tie and matching glasses. The blue vest and red polo. Even to my depleted fashion sense it seemed to clash horribly.

Cal called his look “glam rock.”

I said the place for me is the beach, the waves crashing up and down the coastline. Someplace like Aruba, where the sun sets directly ahead of you, stretching out and mirroring itself on the glassy water, the biggest waves breaking far off into the distance. The wind pushing you, always, giving everyone’s hair that movie star look.

Oh, the writing that is done on the beach is never as awful as it is at a computer screen. It’s why Amy Hempel did her best writing on the coast of California. Why J. Maarten Troost lived on Kiribati for two years.

We have a beach here, Tybee Island, but it’s nothing to write home about.

Or someplace like Jamaica, the palm trees and grass so violently green, colors everywhere to the point of over saturation, Rastafarians as far as the eye can see.

And here I’ll stop, and defend them.

Because the Rastas are the best people in the world. If I was the type of person to have an idol, it would be some Rasta man on a beach selling canoes to rich tourists. If you’ve ever talked to one of them, you know.

Because I think relaxation is the key to happiness.

And that doesn’t mean just sitting around doing nothing, but it means doing what makes you happy.

Not worrying about anything but what you want to.

Cal says he prefers the indoors, music blasting on the stereo, hunched over his laptop, the keys clacking away.

He called me an “escapist.”

I don’t consider it a flaw. I see it as the argument between electric and acoustic guitars. They both sound beautiful if played correctly, but everyone has a preference. I just prefer a more acoustic life.

After only two weeks of a new job, it’s why I feel strangled and confined. It’s why I wish I could quit and move back to the islands.

Because ever since I visited Jamaica, I haven’t been home. I feel like a part of me was left there, on the white beach, the green and blue clear water, the colored fish, the palm trees.

As an aside, palm trees should never be used for decoration in a city.

Some things belong only in nature.

And this is the point in the conversation where we realize we were talking about love.

Cal says, you don’t need it. It’s nice to have, sure, an amenity. But not anything that you can’t do without.

Ernest Hemingway said, "You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love."

I want to meet someone who will escape with me.

 

[Ryunday]

Very nice Wingman. I enjoyed it. Are you going to continue?

[-/TNT\-]

Very nice. Makes me want to go on holidays all of a sudden. But then again, Greece = holiday land...