Ernest Hemingway Reprise

I hesitated briefly as I saw the reassuringly thick spine in the library and finally grabbed it from the shelf. Hemingway to me feels like an old friend who can piece together the disparate pieces of my life, who I had half forgotten about long ago.


The first book I read by Ernest Hemingway was Islands in the Stream when I was in my teens. The thick tome seemed to be about drinking and boating and more drinking and boating and generally sucked and made me think of Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.

I was staying with an uncle who thought he was clever with his quips, like the time we stood in the men's room on the ferry and he whipped it out and proclaimed: "This is where the big boys hang out" to the disgust of the elderly man in the next urinal. Well the uncle is now the old man and if he was on the ferry the old man and the sea. His kids are adults with their own lives and Hemingway is still the big boy of a certain kind of literary genre, his hunting, fishing, shooting presence looming large over swathes of Florida and Cuba.


Hemingway was a man's man perhaps but he eludes pigeon holing. My next read was For Whom the Bell Toll and nobody who reads about the smell of pine needles and the night the earth moved with passion, can ever write him off as literary red neck.


For Whom the Bell Tolls is in many ways Hemingway's finest piece of work, harking back to the days of the Spanish Civil War and a half-imagined idealism we thought we had left behind. The book is devoted to Martha Gellhorn, the reporter Hemingway left his wife for to embark on another torrid and ultimately failed marriage.


Still there is something alluring about the idea of passion amidst the ruins of an under siege Madrid hotel frequented by the press corps. In the days when the news mattered and no longer rose and fell on the latest Tweet, the Spanish Civil War represented a clash of ideologies and as well as a testing ground for the terrible weapons of war that Adolf Hitler was about to unleash on Europe.


Hemingway's idealism may have been misguided but there is no giant of his stature around today to raise Cain as ISIS unleashes a Medieval barbarity on the land Abel's brother was vanquished to.


Next came A Farewell to Arms, a Secondary School text about Hemingway's exploits in Italy in World War One. The novel is laced with a deep pessimism but is an iconic as the image of a soldier and his girl alone in the rain against the massive ornate eaves of Milan Cathedral.


Years later I introduced A Farewell to Arms to a class of 10th Graders and felt the pessimism of the novel wash over me at the failure to see it induce any spark of interest in the computer game infected eyes of the young.


So perhaps that was it. Hemingway is an anachronism with no value to the modern world. He's a passing fancy and a reason why men wear false beards in Key West.


I also read The Sun Also Rises as it moves from Paris to Spain, laced with booze and the existentialism of the Lost Generation, but curiously alluring and fascinating. I cannot read the novel without yearning for Paris or Pamplona and the warm breeze and smell of the Mediterranean.


The other brushes with Hemingway were non literary such as the brief visit to La Floridita bar in Havana where he sobered up on daiquiris after a morning of writing and chain drinking whiskies.


Hemingway blew his brains out in the end in Idaho of all places - far from the Tropics and far from Spain. He is long gone but not forgotten like my memories of his prose. I'm looking forward to revisiting For Whom the Bell Tolls.

How the Message of Born in the USA is Lost 30 Years On

It's hard to believe the iconic Bruce Springsteen song Born in the USA is 30 years old. The year was 1984 and I distinctly remember the powerful riff and belting lyrics along with a image of blue jeans and the American flag that seemed to make this a tub thumping, jingoistic song that made me feel distinctly uneasy.

In 1984 female protesters were chaining themselves to the gates of RAF Greenham Common in protest at the arrival of American cruise missiles, while miners were fighting pitched battles in the streets of northern towns as the Conservative government sought to dismantle the mining unions. It was tempting to see everything in terms of black and white and left and right and to believe Britain was on its way to becoming the 51st state of the USA.

Springsteen's song appeared to be more of the same, a none-too-subtle celebration of American triumphalism.

One of the song's biggest fans was George Will, a conservative columnist who hailed it as a "cheerful affirmation" of all of the good things about America. His pal Ronald Reagan who happened to be President at the time was impressed and he referenced Springsteen and his song of hope during his re-election campaign.

In reality Reagan was fooled by the upbeat nature of the song. If you delve into the lyrics, it quickly becomes apparent that Born in the USA is ironic and about the emptiness of the American dream from the perspective of a Vietnam veteran.

Down in the shadow of penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run, ain't nowhere to go
Born in the USA

A BBC article pointed out Springsteen's song isn't the only one to be misinterpreted. You may not want to play Every Breath You Take by the Police at your wedding because it's about the stalkery kind of love. Nor Does REM's The One I Love go down in the annals of top romantic songs as it contains the line: "This one goes out to the one I’ve left behind/A simple prop to occupy my time."

Richard III Comes Home to Leicester Of All Places

You have to spare the odd thought for King Richard III. Demonized as a scheming hunchback by Shakespeare, and found with his skull smashed in, the King now has the ignominy of being laid to rest in Leicester cathedral.

England has a lot of fantastic cathedrals but I do not believe Leicester is one of them. Apparently it looks like this; still better than those makeshift places that they call churches in the US, but even so...

When we last caught up with Richard he was not doing splendidly at the Battle of Bosworth field in 1485 when he was offering his Kingdom for a horse but ended up with his head staved in anyway.

In 2012 the remains of the king, with a curved spine and the previously mentioned bashed in head, showed up under a parking lot in Leicester. If you have not been to Leicester you may not appreciate what an un Kingly resting place this is. Parking lots in Leicester are generally for having fights and throwing up curries in.

Richard was dug up and a legal battle began over where he should be buried.

a group calling itself the Plantagenet Alliance, argued it was the medieval king's wish to be buried in the historic northern city of York -- the city they claim was closest to his heart. Not only is York pretty but it has more of a kick ass cathedral than Leicester.

 

York Minster

On its website, the Alliance -- reputedly made up of people who are distantly related to Richard III, and headed by Stephen Nicolay, his 16th great nephew -- set out its argument to have him reburied in York.

 

"We believe that the proposed location of Leicester is wholly inappropriate for the burial of King Richard III, who had no connections with the town beyond his horrific death, bodily despoliation and appalling burial in a foreshortened grave," it said.

 

 

Lovely Leicester

 

Eventually they were unsuccessful and Leicester won. The folks at the University are even saying it might bring more visitors to the city, although that would involve them ignoring its abject ugliness.

 

Maybe I am jaded by my horrendous night at the Park Hotel when a drawer fell on my feet and prostitutes were tumbling down the stairs.

As well as all of the bad publicity about being general evil and killing the Princes in the Tower, Richard III falls foul of that joke about the Irish guy who goes to the library and demands a book called "Dick Shit."

The librarian is confused until he explains: "Richard the Turd."

The Most Annoying Song of the Year = # Selfie

It's only April (I think it's still April); which is, of course, the cruelest month boasting the sinking of the Titanic, the Hillsborough tragedy, the Boston marathon bombing and the capsizing of a South Korean ferry, not to mention the A to Z Challenge. Have I smugly mentioned how I did not do it this year? Only 20 times, right.

Also by April I already have a winner for the most annoying song of the year. This one is a radio channel changer, one that makes me jerk my hand to the dial - or as my local radio station states "Put your Nob on Bob," and desperately switch channels as the car veers across lanes.

The song is #Selfie by the Chainsmokers and it sums up all that's wrong with our gadget, Instagram, Twitter, selfie obsessed society: "She's such a fake model. She bought all her Instagram followers." I also suspect it's something of a satire.

OK. Whatever. I don't have time to write anymore. I have selfies to take. Enjoy the video.

On Ashes to Ashes by David Bowie

If there is one song that sums up the madness and complexity of the world it has to be Ashes to Ashes by David Bowie.

I love this song, and not only because it reminds me of business as usual ie. that sense of walking on Mars feeling like a clown as a large tractor threatens to swallow us up but the fact it contains the line: "I've never done good things, I've never done bad things. I've never done anything out of the blue."

Well perhaps I have loved too much and too recklessly but at least I can say I have not hated with an equal vigor. Still I feel bad for making others feel bad and there's that proverbial thin line that stalks me in my sleep and threatens to flip me from one side to another like a shutter opening and closing -from good to bad, from black to white, in and out of the sun until I am dizzy from the infernal flickering.

Am I good or bad? The answer is probably somewhere in between but there is little room for shades of grey on a planet that's either cast in darkness or light - strung out in heaven's high, hitting an all-time low.

So what is the meaning of Ashes to Ashes? I'm sure there are dissertations on this subject. I think it probably means Bowie had taken too many drugs when he wrote this. Still I will never get over getting my fix of this song.

Why You Are Totally and Utterly Mad

It occurs to me that you are totally mad. You know who I am talking about you. Loopy. Bonkers. Three bricks short of a load and the load was unstable to begin with. Don't get me wrong; I am not mocking mental illness, even if I am the only person I have met in this country who doesn't resort to a rattling bottle full of pills. Rather I have come to the conclusion, more through passing observation than an empirical study, that most of us are a bit off keel.

No, not that kind of madness - one step beyond

I have some examples.


1 He stands in my room and I see him shudder inwardly at the sight of my in-box. I know it has affected his equilibrium for the rest of the day.


2 She Tweets until 2 a.m. about the virtues of skinless cats. She complains about being tired the next day and bemoans the way her enthusiasm for the skinless cat is waning.


3 She talks to her feet on the sidewalk. When she sees I have noticed, she quickly pulls out her phone and pretends she was in a conversation with a party other than her toes.


4 She texts me and leaves voicemails in the night asking the price of my rental house, two days after I told her it was $999. She tells me she wants to strike a deal because she can't afford $30,000 a month and her grandmother has gout.


5 She writes on her blog that she won't be on her blog for a couple of days oblivious to the fact none of us are the sun and if we go out the whole world will die. Nope we are Pluto, lost, lonely, cold and insignificant out there fighting to be even recognized as a planet. But didn't we used to be planets? Just give me a week again as a planet damn it.


I can't chide people for being mad. There are seriously days when I look in the mirror and the lights are on but nobody as at home. Apart from the mice that have built a nice little home in my mind - thank you very much.

When in doubt blame Lana Del Rey. Gosh she is fantastic - when will I kick my obsession?

On Fossil Beach, York River

Zara wanted me to blog about her fossil hunting exploits. I was fine with the idea because it can be difficult to decide what to blog about, especially without the big pointy stick up the bottom that is the A to Z Challenge. But it's not all bad; I can lie back in a hammock and drink Margaritas, metaphorically speaking, while the rest of you wake up in the night in a cold sweat doing despicable things to your teddy bear, just because you have no idea what to write about for X.

Yesterday we drove up to Fossil Beach at York River State Park. The kids were initially disappointed because they had spent an hour-and-a-half in a car only to be faced by a half a mile hike and a tiny secluded beach on the river that was not full of ice cream stalls like Virginia Beach.

But the lure of finding fossils on Fossil Beach took over. There's a huge pile of them at the top of the wooden steps as well as a warning that you can't take them away, which must please countless parents who don't want to wake up next to a dirty great fossil, which almost leads me to that story about my room mate who got hideously drunk and ended up in bed with his grandmother - I digress.

Fossil beaches are few and far between but I like them because they awaken the collector in the young imagination. Who can forget the leaden grey skies and the crashing waves of Lyme Regis where we pulled fossils from the cliffs back in secondary school? Who can forget the day Johnnie Briggs stole my prize ammonite and the long and bitter wait for vengeance that came in the form of liberal coating of joke slime that clung as nicely to his backside as it did his classroom chair.

Zara liked collecting fossils anyway and had accumulated a hefty stash by the time the sun was falling low over the river. Jackson found one that promptly exploded revealing itself to be a lump of mud. The day was going splendidly until Zara trod on a sharp fossil, incurred a small cut on her foot, demanded a piggy back to the car and when I declined insisted on making a video to send to her mother about my cruel fossil hunting excursion.

Next week stay tuned for croc taunting in the Congo....

A Tale of Three Camdens

I always liked Camden Town in London even if it made me feel old and terribly untrendy. Camden is grungy and edgy and full of street markets with New Age clothes and girls with dreadlocks and nose rings. The pubs are raw and ready and one strep away from spit and saw dust.

There are the catacombs which are not catacombs but grimy old railroad arches that host a dazzling array of the weird and wonderful accessed on the rickety Northern underground line. There are the railroad lines and the canals and the skeletons of heavy industry that has been refashioned as arts venues in cases such as the Roundhouse - a former railroad turntable converted into a theater. I visited it once to interview the director longer ago than I care to imagine. When the same sex marriage ban was overturned in England, Camden raced to be the first place to hold a ceremony.

Camden made me think of fuzzy nights out; the mingling of smells, beer on the pavement and the remote hope of bumping into Damon from Blur.

When I found myself in rural North Carolina reporting on the trivial doings of Camden County, I rued the comments of my friends who made the London comparison. Camden was and still is a backwater. Its politicians looked at me as if I had fallen from Mars and some of them made a policy not to speak. My backside bears the scars of long nights on the hard benches of the court house, listening to their deliberations about landfill applications.

Although I have left it behind I am still haunted by the lonely swamps of Camden and find myself driving on its empty roads.

Then there is another Camden where I might think twice about setting foot in. Survey after survey highlights Camden, New Jersey as the most dangerous city in America.

"The first thing you notice about Camden, New Jersey, is that pretty much everyone you talk to has just gotten his or her ass kicked," reported Rolling Stone.

Camden is Detroit without the saving factor of tall buildings to avert the eye. It's drugs and gun shots and unemployment and racial tensions.

"It's an un-Fantasy Island of extreme poverty and violence where the police just a few years ago essentially surrendered a city of 77,000," the magazine reported.

Suddenly those quiet swamps don't seem quite as depressing.

BTW - good luck to all of you who are doing the A-Z blogging challenge. Thanks for the mention Jean about how my piece about not being bothered to do the A-Z Challenge, inspired to do it and good luck to Juliette for doing it on err umm doors. Also good luck to my old pal Mark who has taken the plunge from his Greek Island...

Lessons to Learn from Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's Split

So the latest Hollywood spit - oh no I stand corrected "conscious uncoupling" - is between actress Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay singer Chris Martin.

What exactly can we learn from this beyond the phenomenal success of relationships between American woman and British blokes - Madonna, Katy Perry blah. I assembled a panel of eminent relationship experts and compiled a list. Then I abandoned the list and concluded simply...

If two people as mutually smug as Gwyneth and Chris who name their kids after electronic products cannot make it work, what chance is there for us mere mortals?


Although we may go into marriage with the bestest of intentions, marriage, in fact, stifles the very factors that fuel it in the first place due to the imposition of routines and over familiarity. The passion, the longing etc. Only when we start to come out the other side do we see beyond the insignificant things that madden us to get an appreciation of the whole picture of what we had as it slides away. You don't appreciate paradise until someone shoves a parking lot up your rear quarters etc.

I'm not sure about "conscious uncoupling." I am more of an advocate of "unconscious uncoupling" as evidenced by my newly found and rather surprising mutual fixation with a Baptist.

Perhaps things make more sense in Gwyneth and Chris' world as depicted in the actresses' blog Goop where rebranding seems to be the order of the day.


“Youthful Journey-Finding” = When daughter Apple says “I want to go to Dad’s house where there’s candy!”


“Maintaining Post-Pleasure Tranquility” = translated as make sure my new boyfriend sneaks out before kids wake up


“Embracing Joyous Change” = Introducing kids to new boyfriend


“Accepting a New Element” = Introducing kids to dad’s new girlfriend


“Intergenerational Quality Time for Love and Learning” = When Grandma shows up for two weeks so you can go to Fiji with new boyfriend.


And so on. You get the picture...

Five Reasons Why I'm Not Doing the A to Z Challenge

I feel happy not to be doing the A to Z Challenge this year. I took part in the challenge in its first year and the two after that. On each occasion I was confident I would knock out posts in about 3 seconds and devote time to other fascinating pursuits such as watching goldfish. How wrong I was.

This is bittersweet because I made some great blogging pals along the way. However, there comes a time in everyone's life when they have to turn around and say no to A to Z and I am at that parting of the ways. So long and thank you for the fish.

My five reasons not to do the A to Z Challenge:

1 I can't be bothered

2 My theme this year was going to be Aspects About the Inside of a Ping Pong Ball, which may have been challenging

3 I became tired of trying to knock out posts about exotic forms of armadillos at 11 p.m.

4 Good concept but it may have had its day. Do you ever see people still doing the Rubik's Cube?

5 I can't think of a 5. If I can't think of a 5 how could I think of an A to Z? I would seriously consider doing an A to C Challenge. Where can I download the badge?

Good luck to all of you who are doing it. I offer consultancy services and counseling at a reasonable rate.

My Yellow Life in Instagram

I really decided it makes better sense to live life through Instagram. It cuts down on unnecessary conversation and it's pretty. It helps you drift away. Ever wanted to be in a meeting and when you are asked a difficult question to answer with a pastel like image? It keeps our mystique don't you think? Keeps our layers from being stripped away from us.

I like the idea of life through a variety of filters. We can take away the ugliness and give it the Mayfair treatment. Mayfair is classy. The second someone lands on it, you can hear their backside sizzle. Well that's not a classy notion.

My Instamood today is yellow. It's a color of awakenings and new beginnings, like the daffodils struggling to survive in the cold. Back in the mobile classroom some years ago there was a color wheel and they asked us our favorite colors. I rose my hand for yellow but I was alone in my choice. I liked it that way. Generally speaking you can live you life in yellow as long as you avoid yellow snow.

It's advice as enduring as the yellow sand dunes that stretch away for hundreds of miles in the Sahara of my imagination.