Aficionado

Hemingway is described as having a spare style. And it's true that although his novels and stories flow, it is with simplicity. His descriptions rich with imagery in language that has none of the complexity that other authors might interject. His dialogue repetitive, the story not slowed or hastened because it's just an encounter, a passing, and yet without it, it wouldn't be Hemingway.
Each time you visit, or revisit, his writing, the tone and style of these conversations strikes you as juvenile but also how real they are to those that occur naturally in life. We do in actual fact talk like that: echo back what another's said as a question or phrase it differently, respond to confirm we're listening, and comment upon past or forthcoming events made reference to, adding our own concurrence or variance on the matter. We conceal what we don't want known and divulge all that we do, in spite of subtle clues we inadvertently give which are telling.
Our topics of conversation and the small talk we engage in might be different now, but it's still delivered in a ping-pong style: batted back and forth, and Hemingway somehow captures that winningly, like it was a screenplay or an adaptation from life which in his case it probably was. Really, when you think about it most of the conversations we have are frivolous, though we might at the time kid ourselves otherwise, and even in those which do convey sentiments that are important or real, once said they pass. Fade as does the time and place they were said in just like a scene in a play. A new backdrop appears with the same faces or new ones and the action continues.
Real-life situations rarely contain monologues, and so neither does Hemingway; even the telling of a anecdote is peppered with interruptions from hecklers, who are more often than not tight friends. Tight as in getting drunk, till they are falling down or addle headed. And gad, did they seem able to drink in those days! Perpetually swimming in the stuff, so that alcohol becomes the dominate feature with events and friendships circling it, which today we would say is unhealthy, but drink then was a collective sport.
Relationships too, between men and women, are not much healthier in Hemingway's fiction. Some of the women, such as Brett Ashley in Fiesta, come across as impulsive, manipulative and at times uncaring, as well as wanting to be and considered as one of the chaps. Men are played off one another, or else the dialogue, in some instances, seems babyish or sickening; inebriation often the cause of that. The women, however, can seem one-dimensional: their characters not fully fleshed out, yet it doesn't really matter because the narrative is distinctly male. A perspective that female readers might find refreshing, even if modern ideas about 'correct' behaviour oppose that view, because the same passions and jealousies abound in the 21^st century.
Hemingway novels have a fluid-like structure, which though hard to achieve means they could be seen as light reads; they're not. There are deeper undercurrents to plots and characterisations, with much left to guess at, and the atmospheres he creates are disquieting. It's literature that lingers in spite of its lack of lyricism (in my opinion) which other writers successfully convey in prose so that there's a rhythm or song-like quality. Hemingway, at least for me, is more sharp and journalistic, and far more visual, so visual that I can see the scenes he paints unfold as if they were on a Chinese scroll and not just captured in dry words on a page.
He typifies America, yet when I'm immersed in his works I almost forget because Hemingway travels well: the man and his autobiographical fiction. Likewise, although I recognise the alpha male, in him and his chums, it doesn't dissuade me from reading, rather it exhorts me to continue in much the same way a bullfighter works the crowd with his tricks as well as the bull to its untimely demise.

The Scaffold

From my window I can see a crucifix. A lone crucifix made of steel atop a scaffold. Though in truth, it's not been purposely put there, as a marker, for it's part of the structure. A happen-stance of metal rods crossing each other, and viewable only from a certain angle. The angle in which it so happens the windows of my flat lay.
The contractors are unconscious, I dare say, of the large cross they've erected, as I look on, on the left-hand corner. They continue to go about their work, scurry up and down levels, and occasionally swing from these rods like monkeys in their own jungle-gym. Their antics reminds me of those black and white photographs taken by Lewis Wickes Hine in 1931 of the Empire State Building under construction, where migrant workers traversed steel beams unsecured with no harnesses. Now, unlike then, it would be a death-defying stunt, with the risks assessed, that a David Blaine-type might do. Or you'd think so. But these fellas across from me have been cavorting for weeks without any safeguards. There's a couple of woolly hats and occasionally a high-vis jacket and tool belt on display, whilst the mechanisms they employ to winch metal sheets and other building materials are almost as rudimentary as those used in the olden days.
Perhaps I'm wrong then to assume this crude crucifix was an unplanned occurrence, that it wasn't instead deliberate like an amulet to ward off evil, though I really can't imagine any one of them if cornered say over a pint in a pub (another stereotype!) would confess to such an superstitious act. Maybe there's an unspoken, yet followed, law, as there are in most male clans, which says: it stays within the building trade. And construction is after all a man's job. Or a tough woman's, because I think you'd have to be tough (and physically strong) to work in that game. I wouldn't want to and couldn't do it, but some women would take to it like a duck takes to water. Nothing I think should be off limits for any person of any gender, and yet I still stand by my opinion that construction speaks to the 'male'. The masculine side within all of us, though it's more pronounced in others as it is with being left or right-dominant.
Yes, there's something quite caveman-ish about building. It evokes the same kind of imagery, well, in me at any rate. It's mostly out of doors, it's practical and requires brutish strength as well as agility and manual dexterity. It's mathematical, it's mechanical, it's creative. And it's risky, with the kind of dangers our primitive brain relates and has adapted to. It's a trade for doers, not pen-pushers of which I am one.
For someone not so inclined to manual labour, it's fascinating watching men at work and seeing a building rising from ground level or being converted to flats or into a restaurant, as well as the way in which it changes the landscape – where you live and where you work. Even in the distance sometimes, I can see the outlines of cranes or at night the red light that signals them to aircraft.
Everywhere you turn there is development and re-gentrification, which personally I'm ambivalent about or indifferent to, and yet I admire it as a form of work, art even. Because I lack those skills, those learned or inherent, and that motivation to want to take a concept on paper to a solid structure which is not just sound but also visually appealing and in keeping with the area, so that those who make it happen seem like a different breed. Peoples that I want to understand and yet am intimidated by, as much as I am by what they create in all its developmental stages. It's the seemingly impossible made possible with grit and know-how, the likes of which may be transformed by but won't disappear with digital technology since it's a trade that needs bodies not robots.
In summation, I think we'll wind up valuing construction to a greater degree than we do now if the future continues in the direction it's heading, particularly when skills in other fields are on their way to being obsolete. We should never have changed tack and placed academia above the vocational for in doing so we've not only sidelined people but also left a pool of others unprepared for this transference of labour. The platform we've started from should be a support rather than lead to misadventure years later.

Picture credit: Steel Construction, Empire State Building, 1931, Lewis Wickes Hine, NYPL Digital Gallery

Knot Temple

There's a knot I've tied I can't untangle. Although when it first came about I couldn't say, perhaps because it was minuscule like a knot in a fine thread after a button's been secured or a hold darned. It held the repair yet didn't prevent other buttons working loose or other holes appearing, and neither was it sizeable enough to stop the status quo: life, in its own fashion, went on, regardless of whether I was fully cognizant of this one little knot.
Until there came such a time, before today, that this knot could not be thought away or denied. It had grown. Grown into the magnitude of a kidney stone and lodged itself primarily in the trachea, though there were occasions where instead of there it could be felt blocking the entrance to the stomach, just as if it were one in a pile of stones that you might see shielding the opening of a cave. Though perhaps in this case it was more of a barricade rather than a shield for I don't think this stone was guarding or concealing any treasure, but rather preventing feelings – of hurt, of guilt, of anxiety – from reaching their usual endpoint, where they would only swill around or stoically sit and cause upset: a bloating or a sickening sensation, possibly with a suppressed belch or two, or worse the rise of undigested food.
I actually preferred it when this tightly bound knot was higher up, a prominent Adam's apple, or so it seemed to me though it wasn't; there was never any view of it whenever I checked in the bathroom mirror, despite its bobbing, which like a phantom limb was felt if not visible to the naked eye, when I deliberately swallowed or recited some lines of a play.
That there was an obstruction I was sure, and which I knew from past experience might at any moment cause me to gag, or, if only partial, my eyes to mist and my nose to run. Innocuous foods (well, as far as I thought my body was concerned) might bring on the latter: just-made-still-warm nut butter, cucumber, a cup of tea (no dairy), any soup of bland description and boiled, mashed, fried or baked potatoes, and yet, with spicy foods those orifices remained completely dry. Instead there was a coursing of not unpleasant heat which went around or flowed over deterrents like a river whose passage couldn't and wouldn't be halted, but as much as I would have liked to have basked in that affect so that I'd have none of the watering and sniffles I did not think this wise.
Moderation, not limitation, my motto, as well as you can have too much of a good thing, which if you did would only upset the carefully loaded apple cart, and then where would you be? It's right that life should present you with some discomforts, at some time or another, just as it's natural for the body to manifest anything suppressed in the way of physical complaints, though I concede neither beliefs are shared often.
You, the reader, can't even be sure if the person speaking here is the real-life version or a semi-fictional character with true opinions and factual experiences thrown in that might or might not pertain to the author citing them. At the end of the working day, it's all just shrapnel. Grist to the mill, which may or may not be ground and used, and which is as far away as you can get from the subject of knots, or stones for that matter though I guess you might find a bit of grit in amongst the grain. What I'm saying is everything – observable and felt – has that same potential: store, dispose, use right away, though often the process is less machine and more oh, yeah I forgot about that, or where did that come from? Coincidental versus Surreptitious, which then somehow all link up with each other and form a plot, or as I said a knot, which can morph into a stone when its bonds grow too tight to be unpicked and so becomes smooth and flat, enabling you to act out and upon the same themes.
And now suddenly I have this feeling I've written all this before. And not that long ago either – as little as a year, maybe not even that. Are we all on repeat? It can't just be me. I don't get that many kicks from it I can tell you. One or two differences in any situation can be enough to disguise its sameness, enough for us to think 'no, this is different and therefore so will be the outcome.' and then when it isn't, well, we blame ourselves for falling into that trap in the first place. But if these knots were seen for what they are they could be a catalyst to great, or even unusual, things.

Picture credit: The Abbey in the Oakwood, Caspar David Friedrich

Heavy Hearts and Emptier Pockets

There are those who torture themselves for being idle, through no fault of their own, and those who relish any opportunity to be so and in fact find any excuse to do just that. Not all of the latter are plump or jolly or fabulously fat; some are skin and bones, their muscles wasted away, and yet their life, at a glance, seems full of ease. Idle they may be but it doesn't seem to bother them, not even if they have to live on next to nothing or lead the most unhealthiest of lives.
It's far harder being idle when you don't want to be, when this wasn't a conscious choice you made, and when everything then is tainted with slothfulness. The good intentions were there but the work was not. Idle hands makes the mind slow, which makes the limbs leaden and the body lumpish. The old horse doesn't want to pull the cart; the cart will not be pulled for its stuck fast. Both essentially dig their feet in, and no amount of squirming will get them under-way.
Modern life offers more possibilities of that: laziness combined with fidgeting, and it's good men and women that are faced with battling it day by day, in and out of employment. Idle fingers and thumbs when you're at work whoever heard of that? and yet, it happens, is happening in service sectors where administration is called for but rarely done, because the presence of someone carries more weight than the actual workload which up-to-date procedures have greatly reduced.
People are paid to sit and be as unproductive as possible, even though they're infuriatingly bored and itching to do more rather than pretend to be occupied. Superiors have no further work for them to do and so they rifle through papers or sort and amend electronic records, and all the while watch the clock for their next break or home-time. And this goes on day after countless day. The work is not backbreaking and yet, it breaks spirits.
It's employment, true, but its pointlessness borders on insanity, places all those employed to do it in a morale-lowering nightmare. A version of living hell that could never have been foreseen prior to this Digital Age. But where else can such people go when they know nothing else? A tunnel of worthlessness beckons...the darkness drawing them ever on in the faint, yet prevailing, hope there will be a visible light, as they confuse this tunnel with another kind or associate it with finding copper in mines. It will come, it has to. It will be seen or found.
In time, however, even that glimmer of hope dies when the darkness has become an all-encompassing pitchy black, with nothing, no other shade in-between to distinguish the shadows that fall on its tunnelled walls. Then, and only then, do they sink to the floor or stumble onwards like a drunk, weaving man with their eyes unseeing like a mole who might find himself above ground in broad daylight, only their circumstances are reversed.
The gradual realisation, that doesn't for some reason hit bit-by-bit but with a blunt blow, in spite of its unacknowledged, slow coming on, that this could be it is never pleasant. Many a man, and a woman, will want to instantly lay down or drown in their sorrows, knowing that they do not possess the strength to continue groping in this ever-lasting dark when the hope of a light, any light, appearing before them has gone.
With prematurely aged and non-transferable skills, there is no place for them on the upper rungs, unless they can and choose to evolve, which can only be done when an opportunity is granted, and for that there has to be a willing employer, but of these there are not many. And even then it's best not to expect the same job satisfaction or similar pay. Everybody is being squeezed, and if not squeezed then pushed under.
It's a dire state of affairs, which is not in itself new just different, and in some ways more glum-making for those who are not young and not yet old. The young have more resilience and will adapt, the retired don't have to try. The middle generations that fall between suffer, particularly if they're not made of stuff that can take these constant knocks and shut-downs. And so, they wander in the dark with heavy hearts and emptier pockets.

Picture credit: The Angelus, Jean-Francois Millet, 1857-1859, Musee d'Orsay