Hemingway and Foxes

I’m sitting here this morning, bemoaning my dual shortfalls of inspiration and industry. Actually, I’m not even sure why I feel it necessary to include the time of day as a necessary pronouncement; it matters little, all things considered. It could just as easily be midday, evening’s prime time or perhaps those heavy, dark hours of late night, those erstwhile wellsprings of all things creative, those portals through which enter the monsters and fairies, the demons and the angels, and all the greater and lesser tools of innovation once offered by a mind troubled with humankind’s vagaries and nature’s duality of cruelty and majesty.

Similarly, it’s immaterial that I’m sitting. The fact that I reference my body position at all exemplifies the egocentricity and futility of my efforts. Were I suspended upside down in a tank of sea water at a depth of 50 fathoms, with a great white shark lurking in the shadows, the words would be no more or no less important. Regardless of the importance some would place upon their endeavors, writing is not a spectator sport. Even if, in retrospect, we found out that Hemingway wrote A Sun Also Rises in blood, with a cactus quill, in twenty minutes, while gorked on wine and heroine, we wouldn’t place one whit of interest whether he was sitting, standing or simultaneously engaged in acts of banality with a syphilitic Spanish cabana boy. It’s all about the words.

And the words don’t come. All the while, the clock ticks and the world turns and others make love to each other, kill each other, make love then kill each other, and somewhere a kit fox watches the snow fall from inside her den, never once considering the ramifications of any actions other than those immediately surrounding her. But you won’t hear about it from me, much as I may desire to tell you about loving, killing or foxes.