Happy Fathre's Day (where applicable)

little men

Assurances for little men
Come sometimes from their fathers.
Soft or stern, convincingly
Lifts heads and clouds that bother.
Still,
If fortune’s shadow’s looming long,
And numbers grow too large,
little men, they too can rise to
Give comfort to their fathers.


This piece is related to a short story I wrote for the previously mentioned writing class. It is about a little boy's understanding of his father and family's financial troubles. Luckily, this is fiction that does not come from personal experience. Though the picture above does fit into my childhood memory.

Spring, you bastard.

The following was inspired by the previous post's Hemingway excerpt--and this ridiculous season we've been in. This was written for the Creative Writing class I'm currently taking, and will be posting a few others as well. Enjoy.

Spring, you bastard:
Give it up already.
Calendar summer is nearly here,
and yet you still are.
Cool and blustery,
no hint of humidity--
though, surely, I will curse it when it is.
So, perhaps I spoke too soon,
dear season.
As with so much else,
we like you when you're gone,
we want you when you're fleeting,
retreating.
The way a New Yorker wants
nothing more than escape--
until they do, then can't wait,
to return to your sweltering
embrace,
your suffocating
comfort,
your painful familiarity.

For many years now, spring,
you've had barely a week here,
sliding from winter to summer with
the gracelessness of the city itself.
So maybe you're not a bastard;
a child born of slovenly winter and elusive summer.
Maybe, finally, a phoenix born of the ashes of fall,
when summer gives way to winter's custodial rights,
and you, spring, however brief,
come to us for a court demanded visitation.

The False Spring

"...I could never be lonely along the river. With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm air wind would bring it suddenly one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in [insert your city here--Hem's was Paris] because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was though a young person had died for no reason.

In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed."

-Ernest Hemingway

I've had this feeling about NYC, lately. Though somewhat different, as it's more that a long spring is holding up the beginning of summer, the sentiment remains. It's always seemed to me that we don't even have much of a spring, maybe a week; it usually goes straight from freezing winter to sweating summer. Not this year.

Pretty sweet, huh? Obviously, I think so. Came across this piece when skipping through the books of Hemingway's I have. This is from A Moveable Feast--memoirs of his younger days as an aspiring and then somewhat famous writer, after WWI. His novel The Sun Also Rises, as well, is about this era in his life. I recommend more the latter than the former.

Right, so as you've noticed, I haven't been on here much in the last few months. Suffice it to say, between finally getting back on a routine with school stuff and the fact that I haven't had the internet at home for a while, I just haven't been able to or really had the desire. Don't worry, I don't love you any less.