Do You Know a Way When You See One, Hemingway?

(Check out The Abortion Taboo: Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" )

I'm in this way. It's like a way, sort of, when things happen over and over and you begin to suspect that this is the way things are. It's not good. But it's not really bad. Or, at least, it's not as bad as you expected "bad" to be. You're not way out there, you're not on your way; no, you're just in this way.

When it's like this, you have to begin. You have to look for some place to start and then, when you realize there isn't any place, you just, you know, start to begin. You just do it. You think of the people who had a hard time beginning and you do it the way they did it.

Hemingway started with one declarative sentence. He would write one true sentence. Later, he cut words, eliminated similes, searched for and destroyed speeches. He checked to make sure the temperature was correct. But in the beginning, before there was a beginning, he wrote one true sentence.


He killed himself, though.

When you're in a way, it's never enough just to begin. Sometimes it feels like it's worse to begin, because when you're in a way, you never finish. You can begin, but you can't finish, until the not finishing prevents you from beginning, and then you're finished before you ever begin. When it's like that, then you know you're in a way.

Sometimes you don't know you're in a way. Sometimes, you just come home from work. Or you write a story. Or you buy your girlfriend flowers. Sometimes you see a funny movie. Sometimes it's the funniest movie, and you know it will always be the funniest movie, and the most serious thing in your life will be convincing other people that it is the funniest movie ever made. Maybe you're washing dishes. Maybe you're washing dishes and then putting them in the dishwasher, because your dishwasher doesn't really wash dishes. It wets dishes, and if the dishes were already clean, they will stay that way. Perhaps you're in the bathroom now, washing your hands, and you look up in the mirror and you see something you did not expect. It's your face, certainly. You know enough to be sure of that. But still, you see something there that you had forgotten. And now, when you are remembering why it was forgotten, you realize you are in a way.

It's just a way, though. On the bad days, you forget that simple fact. It's a small fact, so small of a fact that on a bad day you don't recognize it for a fact. It's just a way. The mirror will show you a way. If you wait, it will show you another way. Often, the second way is worse than the first. Then, because of the sadness that comes, you wait some more until you see a third, a fourth, and a fifth way, and all of these ways are the same way, and they are much, much worse than the first or the second way. On the bad days, you then leave the mirror, and accept all five ways as the way. You can't believe that there will ever be another way.

On the good days, you remember to not leave the mirror until you've seen a sixth or a seventh way, or even a fifteenth way--any amount of ways that it takes for you to remember that individually, they're just ways.

Hemingway said it was a bad thing to talk about it, when things were going this way. It never pays, he thought, to talk about the way of things. None of it is true, he thought. Start with one true thing, then proceed with another true thing, until you have a lot of true things. And if you perservere, if you remain true to the true things, when you're fiinished you'll have just one thing, and it will be true.

He killed himself, though.

Truth is just a way of seeing things, I think. If you forget that, your way is going to be difficult. In a way, though, it's always going to be difficult. For better or worse, it's just the way things are.

Check out: The Abortion Taboo: Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"

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