Hemingway and Me

If given a choice, I think I'd like to be beach bound with countless cats, drunk and writing all the live long day.

Like Hemingway.

Now don't get me wrong and for God's sake, untwist those English major panties, please. I am not comparing literary styles. I am not suggesting that I am the next great American novelist. I'm simply drawn to a few of the finer ingredients in what should have been Hemi's 1930s lifestyle cookbook. 

Namely:

1. Beach.

2. Cats.

3. Booze. 

4. Writing.

Having lived a more structured life for the last 33 years I think I am ready to exchange it for a few dozen, God willing, preponderantly Havanian-flavored seasons. 

The recent events of 2020 have shaken me like Scrooge after coin-eyed Marley grabbed him, double fisted, by the nightgown. I'm floating around in a similar dream state, examining what I thought were the most productive years of my life and wondering: Should I have done something else? Been something else? 

And with everything so berserk and ferocious and frenzied, I ponder the idea...am I living my truth? Am I listening and learning? What is the universe telling me?

Lots of my friends are searching and probing as the world twists off its axis. I receive their distress signals via text every day; and although the lot of us are on very different paths, we seem to have one solid sentiment in common: 

Screw all this. 

I feel we are each primed for personal upheaval. 

Lately, like Hemi, I've engaged in a little day drinking. It's not a regular occurrence, but I cannot deny the sensuously gentle touch of alcohol in the belly right around 3 pm. It makes my brain fog seem like cotton candy clouds festooned in tinsel and doused with glitter and gloss. I haven't decided whether this is a perfectly legitimate form of lubrication which allows for unbridled written self expression or whether I might eventually need an intervention, but today, because I am a realist I say fuck it. Pass me another hard kombucha.

At this moment, I can see Hubs and me packing our bags to live among the Key West outlaws where I can loudly profess what I love right out down in the street; where I can help usher the sea turtles into the ocean; where the sun can bespeckle my nose with caramel-colored stipples; where the Ron Centauro rum flows unreservedly; and where I can stroke the warm fur of lazy genetically freakish multiple-toed cats whenever the hell I please. 

And where I can write about it. All the live long day. 

Roll out the turquoise carpet. I've had enough.

Fun Fact: Ernie claimed to have written mostly when sober, a notion upon which I call "bullshit".

And, just for giggles: here is the Hemingway cat cam: https://www.hemingwayhome.com/cams/cat/

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