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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 21st
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.
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
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
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