Originally this blog post was going to focus on the
television show “Saturday Night Live” as seen through my eyes over the past
several decades. I even had a keen
observation on the “Not Ready for Prime
Time Players”. Belushi (John not Jim)
was definitely the Id whereas Ackyroyd (Dan not Peter) was the Ego. Gilda was the heart, Jane the face, Lorraine
the inner child, Garrett gave the cast some theatre cred and Billy I think was
the soul. Chevy in some ways I think was
the Super Ego, but I may be stretching that just to include the whole Freudian
psyche model.
Then I read Ernest
Hemingway’s “The Green Hills of Africa”
Then something changed.
I have been trying
to write this post for weeks. I’ve
debated back and worth of writing a fictional story embracing the concept or
just to go forward as a standard post.
Time and a desire to communicate, even if it is just me yelping from the
blogosphere as pushed me toward the latter, but the former hopefully will be on
some page in the future. I am still fathoming the passage listed below; an echo
that rings back and forth at my core. A
competing call that sounds against the constant uncertainty that plays inside. A call to truth, my truth and to write that
truth and share it no matter the lack of reward or recognition, simply for the
sake of the quest (Hemingway uses the word hunt, but I like quest, it is more
noble) itself. Can the madness of Don Quixote
still persevere in this modern world, consuming its victims as it has over the
centuries and propelling them to fight, to woo, and in then end to succumb to
their fate. It’s a far better adventure
than what I am on now and I can’t help to be a bit excited about embracing the
madness, but decades of being cautionary is not easily dismissed. I suppose not every journey begins with a
leap. Bilbo’s began with one step; one
step and then another, and another.
I have copied the
excerpt from the book and listed it below.
Read at your own risk!
“Now it is pleasant to hunt something that you want very
much over a long period of time, being outwitted, out-maneuvered, and failing
at the end of each day, but having the hunt and knowing every time that you are
out that, sooner or later, your luck will change and that you will get the
chance that you are seeking. But it is
not pleasant to have a time limit by which you must get your kudu or perhaps
never get it, nor even see one.
It is not the way
hunting should be. It is too much like
those boys who used to be sent to Paris with two years in which to make good as
writers or painters after which, if they had not made good as writers or
painters, after which, if they had not made good, they could go home and into
their father’s business. The way to hunt
is for as long as you live against as long as there is such and such an animal;
just as the way to paint is as long as there is you and colors, and canvas, and
to write as long as you can live and there is pencil and paper or ink or any
machine to do it with, or anything you care to write about, and you feel a
fool, and you are a fool, to do it any other way. “
