"I of my own knowledge…"

Another little excerpt from my conversations with Hemingway, forthcoming this fall as Hemingway on Hemingway.

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This is another small excerpt from my forthcoming book of transcripts of altered-state conversations with what I take to be the still-living mind that was Ernest Hemingway. The process of talking to Papa proved educational in many ways. Not only did the sessions give me insight into Hemingway’s life and opinions, they often gave me ways of seeing his work that I found not only convincing but helpful beyond their own framework. This one, for instance.

A boy’s perspective

[May 16 and 17, 2010]

A friend of mine, a retired teacher of literature in Denmark, followed these conversations as I sent them around on the Internet, and one day wrote me that her students never could decide which was the point of “Indian Camp,” that Uncle George was really the father of the baby and so the Indian killed himself, or that the Indian couldn’t stand her pain, and so he killed himself. So I asked which it was.

Neither. When you read my stories, look at every element in them. You may not know why, but every element is there for a reason. And, remember, you are to get an emotion from it. Look at the last line.

Nick knew that he would never die.

List the elements in “Indian Camp.”

["Indian Camp" is only three pages long, but I listed many thing, including: the rowboat with two waiting Indians; Nick, his father, Uncle George; two rowboats, each with an Indian rowing; George smoking a cigar and giving the Indians cigars; a dog barking, then more dogs; an old Indian woman holding a lamp; the young Indian woman who had been trying to give birth for two days; her husband, who had cut his foot badly three days earlier; Nick’s father explaining that her screams were not important; no anesthetic; hot water, coffee, and sterilization; the doctor washing hands carefully and thoroughly, explaining why; the woman biting Uncle George during the operation; Nick's father showing Nick, and Nick looking away; Nick's curiosity had been gone for a long time; Uncle George looked at his arm. The young Indian smile reminiscently; Nick’s father excited and talkative afterwards. “One for the medical journal”; “oh you're a great man all right.” The proud father dead with throat cut. “sorry I brought you, Nick. Awful mess”; always such a hard time? Exceptional”; “Why did he kill himself? Couldn't stand things, I guess”; do many kill themselves? Not very many; do many women? Hardly ever; “is dying hard?” “I think pretty easy. Depends”; the sun coming up. Bass jumped. Hand in water; quite sure he would never die]

So compressed; hard to summarize more than it already was.

All right. Now, try to relax and we’ll get it through. Can you see how sex and death are interwoven in the boy’s experience?

I guess it was his first sight of a woman’s sex organs, and in a gory context. I guess that’s why “he looked away, his curiosity gone for a long time.”

And he asks if many men kill themselves, if many women do, and why, and is dying hard. And the physical surroundings — the morning, the warmer water, the fish, his father rowing — makes him “quite sure that he would never die.” Going forward in the dark it had been first the three white men, or the two and the boy, then they met the Indians and divided, then they were all together, then George went off by himself, then it was Nick and his father returning in the daytime.

I’m afraid I am still too dense to get the full intent.

The doctor intended to begin Nick’s education, but he got more than he had bargained for. He was not an evil or cruel man, but he turned off his emotional response to do the job he was there to do. Coming back he told Nick he was sorry he had gotten him involved, but he wasn’t sorry for anything else — not his lack of sympathy for the mother, not his own unawareness of the effect of someone’s pain on someone else. He didn’t realize. He didn’t realize that the Indian — who couldn’t get away because of his foot — would be affected by the pain that he himself had disregarded — not the pain but the evidence of pain, the screams.

I don’t understand the Indian smiling reminiscently. Just to bring the connection to sex back?

The same action in different contexts has different meanings, and it can suggest connections. As it did.

Nick was a boy and he didn’t really understand a lot about what he was seeing, did he?

That’s the point exactly. That’s exactly it. He was quite sure he would never die. He would also never get involved in messy situations, would never be callous or unimaginative, would never cause pain and certainly would never kill himself. That’s why the last line. He recorded, he remembered, he observed, but he didn’t really understand — and the reader who did understand got the point. It wasn’t designed to teach obstetrics or fishing, and it wasn’t a detective story. It was to feel that state of observing but not understanding.

And Uncle George?

He showed sympathy in contrast to his brother’s (or could be his brother in-law’s; didn’t matter) businesslike manner-of-fact attitude. George shared cigars; George helped, though it is mentioned only in the doctor asking him to move the blanket; George was a little disgusted by the doctor’s slight bragging and his self-satisfaction; George was upset by the suicide and didn’t want to be around the doctor’s matter-of-fact attitude about it, even though the doctor was upset. The two men were upset about it in different ways. The doctor was upset that Nick had seen it, that it was senseless and unnecessary. George could imagine the man’s cumulative state — for he had been unable to get away, remember. He had badly cut his foot the day before she had started going into labor two days before. He’d stood it all. The doctor abstractly understood, but he didn’t necessarily let himself feel it. His concern was for Nick. Where did Uncle George go? He’ll turn up all right. In other words, nothing happened to him; he’s safe. But he’s not in sight. So you see, George was there to bring out certain aspects that couldn’t have come out if the doctor and Nick had been there alone among the Indians. George was hurt, he was injured, by the woman’s pain, as the doctor was not. But there’s no need to make George the baby’s father — if I’d had that in mind, you’d have known, and if I’d had that in mind and you hadn’t known, I’d have failed (assuming perception on your part).

Another strand to the story was good intentions going astray, wasn’t it?

Yes. The doctor saved the baby and the mother but never thought of the father; he wanted to give Nick experience but gave him more than he wanted to. George was there in sympathy but never realized who needed it, and wasn’t able to do anything except help in the operation.

Other elements in the story?

Well, reread it again and see if it looks different now.

I see that it is a description as a young boy would see it. The objects that stood out to him. And I noticed, this time, the line about the men having moved off up the road to be out of the range of her screaming. Her husband is smoking a pipe, like them, but he is right there. As you say, he couldn’t get away.

When the doctor says the screams are not important is when the husband rolls over against the wall. And you will notice, the young Indian woman after the operation “did not know what had become of the baby or anything.” Nick’s perception, you see. Sensory inputs still wide open, regardless of what he did or didn’t understand.

I can see how the stories were aimed: you wanted people to react to them as they reacted to life. The stories affect you as life comes at you, and they affect you but you may not know why or how.

That’s it exactly. Does this say anything about how far off the critics were? If you criticize the facts of the story but don’t absorb the atmosphere of it, you can’t see the reason for the facts. So you don’t know what you’re talking about. You wind up trying to make George the father because of the cigars, or you ask about the wrong things. But the reason for the story is right there in the final line: “In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.”

That’s as much as I can do for now. Thank you. I’m learning something.

Did an interesting interview Friday night with Ken Jackson, host of  Global Perspective, a blogtalk show on Freedomizer Radio.

Freedomizer Radio appears to specialize in pursuing conspiracy theories, which is not exactly at the center of what I spend my time talking about. And yet, perhaps it wasn’t such a misfit, either. People who are unwilling to consider conspiracy theories are often unwilling to consider that things may be different than they appear on the surface. And if that isn’t true in psychic exploration, I don’t know what is. We talked a good deal about the process of communicating with the other side. Ken Jackson asked interesting questions, and we had a good time. Find the interview here: http://blogtalk.vo.llnwd.net/o23/show/2/940/show_2940209.mp3. My segment begins 7:35 into the link, and ends about half an hour before the end.

I included this exchange in my forthcoming  Hemingway on Hemingway.

Legitimate Suffering and Mental Illness

Sunday, August 8, 2010, 5 AM. Just spent most of an hour posting [on my website] a couple of conversations from May…. It was interesting to read the pieces from May 24 and 25. I had forgotten that it was from Carl Jung that I first got the concept that Hemingway represented a complete man, that his great attractiveness to people stemmed from his wholeness. Obviously that didn’t prevent him from experiencing and ultimately succumbing to serious personality problems, but it does change the picture. All right, so here we go. Dr. Jung, I have been using a quotation of yours as a part of my signature in e-mails for some time, but only yesterday — at your prompting? — did it occur to me that I didn’t quite understand it. It rings true intuitively but it could do with some explanation. “The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.” What is “legitimate suffering,” and for that matter what is mental illness, and how are they thus so intimately connected?

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Some pretty good information from the guys upstairs this morning, complete with diagrams. Some of the information builds on material from The Sphere and the Hologram, and The Cosmic Internet, but should be understandable enough.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

The other night, sparked perhaps by something Facebook-related — it reminded me of high school, I think — I had absolutely crippling pain just beneath my rib cage, and my back too. Just now occurs to me, maybe I blew out a blockage at the solar plexus.

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Tentative cover.

I can forget the damnedest things. Only because I was poking around in my journal, thinking to write a post about having been in  Charlottesville for a year come the 27th that I found this communication, written but never read into the computer, and therefore never printed out.

I had finished my second draft of the Hemingway manuscript, but was dissatisfied with it. On the other hand I felt like it was time to move on to other things. As anyone familiar with ILC will tell you, the more you are emotionally involved, the harder it is to be sure that you are really talking to anyone besides yourself. But, I thought I’d try to talk to Papa, see what he thought.

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I feel like saying, “here I am again, back from the dead!” More to the point, I’m back from last revisions (I hope!) to Hemingway on Hemingway: Afterlife Conversations on His Life, His Work and the Myth, my seventh book, which is to be published later this year by Rainbow Ridge Books, the imprint owned by Bob Friedman, my old partner at Hampton Roads.

I  suppose the easiest way to explain what I’m doing is just to append the Introduction.

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Here, dredged from my journals, a little perspective from our guys on the other side, a cheering message as we enter a new year.

Monday, May 2, 2011

8:15 AM. Okay guys, you’re up. I can’t remember where we were, but presumably you can.

You as ring-master of your far-flung community are in effect continually redefining reality.

What do we mean by that?

First, remember that in life there are no absolute divisions, only the appearance of absolute divisions. Everything ultimately connects to everything else, in different degrees of intensity and different degrees of separation. So, it is literally impossible for you to avoid affecting the universe by anything you do.

At the same time, there is no one center to things. There isn’t a main table in the center of the ballroom, and your table far away at the fringes. In effect, for you and for everyone, you are at the center of your world. All things that happen are measured by their importance relative to you. Despite what centralized media may lead you to believe, there are no unimportant players in the world – your world or anyone’s world. But there are so many [centers]!

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I wonder if anybody realizes that just because  I am willing to do a psychological strip-tease in public, it doesn’t mean I am necessarily always comfortable doing it. Nonetheless, I proceed, because I am persuaded that it is worth doing for what it may suggest to various people.

This from my journal, rediscovered as I proceeded to perform this version of a past-life review.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

7 AM. I guess it isn’t a matter of what I produce, so much as what I become. I know that, so why is it always a revelation? But any time I am able to make it real to me, it’s like the first time, each time.

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