An Hour for Life
An essay on The Old Man and the Sea
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What is there to say about this book that hasn't already been said? What can I add to the canon of Hemingway?
Questions discarded for living.
Do not ask when there is an opportunity to act.
It has been years since I've had a "favorite" book. It once was Jitterbug Perfume, by Tom Robbins who sadly passed away this year (and if that name is new to you, check out an amazing eulogy for him written by Michelle Bane here).
I wonder now, if this short book by an immense figure is my favorite.
It may be.
The Old Man and the Sea does not fill my thoughts daily. I do not expound its virtues everywhere I can. But I breathe it. I live it. I return to it in a way impossible with other fiction.
It takes an hour out of your day to read this book. Maybe two, or maybe only half, we all read at different paces. It is simple enough and driven enough for a sitting.
I reread it this morning. It is only the second time I've done so.
In school, we read the book over a few weeks. You cannot live this book this way. There is a depth to analyze within it certainly, but that is not why the iceberg formed. You may equip your wetsuit and dive beneath the surface to explore every crevasse of the mass of floating ice, knowing it over days and weeks, and seeing every detail which shaped it and made it, and it made. Or, you may experience in one breathtaking moment. Understand the depth of the mass floating on the sea while only seeing the tip, floating above the horizon.
I'd rather do the latter.
The badlands of North Dakota find themselves one of my favorite places in the world. They are not top of the list because their beauty is so striking as to inspire or their hikes divine and breathtaking, or their wildlife unparalleled. They are a slow beauty, a beauty felt rather than seen. An hour, sat in the cool silence of the morning, coffee steaming into the air. Maybe there is a bison in the distance, there usually is, crossing the striated lines of soil that build up into the bluffs and hills and badlands. It is only an hour, but you are filled. It is beauty within your bones. It is within your soul.
For what are you born?
What you work in life may kill you. It will kill you.
"...everything kills everything else in some way. fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive."
You don't need to scrutinize life though. An hour of your time is all that it needs. Experience the breath of warm coffee on a cold day in the badlands. Experience the life of a fisherman battling for everything.
Experience, live, relive, without scrutiny or detail.
I purchased The Old Man and the Sea at a turning point in my life. I knew my job was killing me. I knew I was a writer as well as an engineer. I knew I did not wish to be out at sea, beyond the fisherman and the shore, to the place where sharks swam. I was there though, and I could dwell nowhere else. There was no time for thinking of baseball.
I sat on my porch, as I did this morning, and read. I did not rise from my chair until the last page turned and the book was shut once more. I did not scrutinize, I lived, for an hour.
It made all the difference.
Today, I am not at the crossroads I found in younger times. Still, I read. I lived. I let the majesty of the iceberg astound me and the breadth of the badlands seep into my bones without thought or digging deeper. Depth can be felt rather than explored.
None can know the iceberg save for itself. "'What's that?' [the tourist] asked a waiter and pointed to the long backbone of the great fish that was now just garbage waiting to go out with the tide.
"'Tiburon,' the waiter said. 'Eshark.' he was meaning to explain what had happened.
"'I didn't know sharks had such handsome, beautifully formed tales.'
"'I didn't either,' her male companion said."
We cannot know the story of the iceberg. We can only see it from a distance and ingest it how we wish, feeling instead of exploring.
Some days that's all the better.
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Love ya!
Max