Thursday, August 12, 2010
2:30 AM. Going to bed earlier merely results in getting back to this that much earlier, I see. Very well. Gentlemen?
We think you will find that working on the notes will prove rewarding. You barely started, but you did start.
I know, I hear the same subtext everybody else seems to be hearing — “but you must hurry.”
But you must move, at least. The times begin to move more swiftly; you must move if you are not to be left behind.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
5:45 AM. A delicate question, papa. One whose answer may prove difficult. Reading Baker, page 222. This is in 1931:
“On a visit to the MacLeishes at Uphill Farm in Conway Massachusetts, Ernest was standing before the fireplace when the MacLeishes’ daughter Mimi came in to greet him. Something in his manner frightened her and she ran off to her bedroom. Ada found her crying and saying over and over that this was not the Hemingway she knew. Ernest spent nearly an hour talking to the child upstairs, and afterwards compared her to the child Ellie in “Disorder And Early Sorrow,” the story of Thomas Mann’s that he liked best after Buddenbrooks.”
There is no further mention of the incident. What was that all about? I don’t know the Thomas Mann story, so I don’t know what you were referring to. But something in that description makes me think that the girl accurately saw you as being different. Did she?
Sunday, August 8, 2010
5 AM. Something different today. Just spent most of an hour posting a couple of conversations from May so as to have that chore done — I was too tired to do this, maybe, but couldn’t sleep longer. We’ll see if I drained the batteries or did something efficient.
It was interesting to read the pieces from May 24 and 25. I had forgotten that it was from Carl Jung that I first got the concept that Hemingway represented a complete man, that his great attractiveness to people stemmed from his wholeness. Obviously that didn’t prevent him from experiencing and ultimately succumbing to serious personality problems, but it does change the picture.
Friday, August 6, 2010
5:40 AM. Starting to get that old feeling, time passing. And I can see that in fact I have reached the point where the accumulated material, undigested, is starting to overwhelm me. Time for the analytical work that will pull it all together.
My friends Dale and joy, visiting from Arizona, to be added to my Papa list. And still I get the feeling — get the material out there. And in return I say, what’s the hurry, all of a sudden?
What do you tell people in similar circumstances?
Monday, August 2, 2010
5 AM. Yesterday worked out all right, and I didn’t get a bad night’s sleep. I’m regretfully concluding that sleeping with the windows open may be a problem. At least, not doing so has alleviated the problem, maybe.
Open for business, papa?
Not now — I’m busy re-running those Star Trek episodes.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
6:30 AM. Not feeling so hot. A combination of too much Star Trek, too late going to bed, too much uneasy breathing, apprehension over the talk I have to give this morning, and general symptoms that so often accompany a sudden cold snap, such as came in with rain last night. Not the best background for communication, perhaps. I was up at six, decided to go back to bed, and here I am half an hour later. Just to preserve continuity? For I don’t feel like much. And yet, as I told [my brother] Paul, I wind up feeling better as I work, so why not?
How about it, Ernest? Is that how it was for you?
Friday, July 30, 2010
5:15 AM. I should start with what I realized yesterday after the morning’s entry, at 8 AM and again at noon.
[Thursday, July 29
8 AM. It explains a lot. Hemingway lived in both worlds routinely. Again, a model of wholeness. The C1 sensory everyday world he enjoyed as anyone does. The imaginal world, F27, he accessed all the time — reading, writing, remembering, visualizing. I don’t say that he knew what he was doing and why he was doing it — but he did it.
It requires an explanation of the two worlds. I thought I’d have to sit down and provide it, but it occurs to me, of course I can just ask for it. So —