Day 26 of year 2 of Pandemic

Tree's are in bloom and so are my allergies. Also hazy and overcast, I found the air heavy and sluggish, when I walked to the grocery store. Picking up various food-stuffs, and items I most likely don't need, but wanted anyway.
The world is an odd one - in the store folks wear masks, on the streets it is a mixed bag.

I'm watching the first installment of the Ken Burns & Kim Novik Ernest Hemingway doc, and I keep dosing off. (I know a great deal of it already - because hello, English Lit Major and my father was a huge Hemingway fan. My mother also appreciated Hemingway. I read Hemingway in junior high, high school, and college. And worked to accomplish that clean style. My father not only worked to accomplish it - he even submitted to a writing contest entitled "grace under pressure" in a literary mag - to write a pure Hemingway short story. I think I may have as well.)

I also found his writing difficult to digest though - it wasn't the writing though, or the style, but the subject matter. I was not interested in the characters. Even if I appreciated the minimalist style. Removal of unnecessary words and description - the ability to get it across with as little words as possible. My father loved that type of writing, and I wanted my father's approval - but also, I discovered more than one writing prof felt much the same.

The other bit about Hemingway that had influenced my writing - was Hemingway's notion of digging deep into the dark side of the human psyche, to show the good, the bad, ugly, joy, and pain - all of it. And touch on those difficult emotions.

Hemingway was a war correspondent and newspaper writer - which influenced his fictional writing. He had a tendency to write what he knew, and often in a manner that was cruel to his friends. Which - was what I didn't like about newspaper writing or writing about reality - it can be exploitative and painful.

I can't remember the books I read clearly though - The Old Man and the Sea, In Our Time, The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Farewelll to Arms. Actually that's not true - I remember two of them - The Old Man and the Sea, and The Sun Also Rises. The Old Man and the Sea - is a beautifully written and raw tale, short, clean, and succinct about a man fighting nature, and not quite winning.

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Spent most of the time today, watching the tube (television - the American short hand for television was the tube). Nothing much worth reporting on, outside of the Hemingway documentary that I'm watching now. It's comforting in its way. I like Ken Burns documentaries. Hemingway broke writing rules to make points, rhythmic emphasis, etc. Which had an influence on myself and my father. I also remember my father's Corona type-writer, which he used much like Hemingway in the 1970s pounding out a book or stories that never got published. Although he did non-traditionally publish other books in his fifties and sixties, and those books have been read by a wide range of people who have loved them.

Hemingway states that you write one true sentence. If you have something to say - write it. If you don't, don't.

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Spoke to mother, niece was vaccinated today. No side-effects that I know of. She thinks it was the Pfizer. I texted her, but haven't received a response. Bro drove her all the way to Schnedacty - a forty minute drive to get it. He's not sure why - the CVS near them had it as well. He did that for himself and his wife as well.

Having digestive issues again - an on-going issue. I may need to change what I'm eating? Don't know. Or drink more water.

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Lonely. There's all these ads about beach vacations, lake vacations, and how everyone is booking. It makes me feel lonely.

And the Renegades podcast today didn't help - where Springsteen and Obama eloquently pat each other on the back for getting their shit together, finding someone who will put up with them, and living a full life with a significant other and children. I wondered when they were discussing this if they realized that not everyone listening to them has had that experience?
And how harmful that is? There's so many statements we make in a cavalier manner - that hurt others, which we don't realize.

Me: So I've been listening to these podcasts with Obama and Springsteen, along with both the Obama's books - and I keep feeling like they are trying to sell me something.
Mother: Probably because they are politicians and they are always trying to sell something.

Mother tells me that a lot of my relatives wouldn't mind hearing from me.
I'm not as alone as I think. I just happen to have a bad case of phone phobia. I don't like calling people on the phone.