I took Owen with me to Fantasy Fest
to help me man my booth. He went to
the aquarium, we went to the Hemingway House.
We ate lunch at the Half Shell Raw Bar by the turtle kraals.
He had a fried grouper sandwich. Later, he fell in with the food vendors
selling seafood shish-kabobs. The smell of lamb, roasting on a spit,
the pennants snapping in the breeze. Fiesta! I had created a monster.
At the Hemingway House he saw pictures of Hemingway with big game
he shot on safari, big fish he caught in the Gulf Stream. Old Hem with
his knuckles skinned from fighting, no shirt, no shoes, no shave, a rope for
a belt, who gives a shit. Eureka! He saw that there was more to being a writer
than worrying about money and shouting at your wife and kids. There was eating
seafood, out, in restaurants, or from vendors, who traveled, like carnival roustabouts.
The bluegrass festival circuit was calling him. I had created a monster.
Well, he created himself, practicing. He bought The Old Man and the Sea
and read it in a sitting. Also some Nick Adams hunting stories.
What I learned going to a street fair with my father.
I learned to woodshed on my instrument.
To teach myself to play.
To be a Chinese bebop fiddler
from Outer Space, as Balder called him.
So that is what Dad is doing up there in his eyrie.
Woodshedding. Teaching himself to play any tune in any key.
Like Charlie Parker in the Ozarks. After he'd been cut in a cutting contest.
He was mastering the basics. Learning the drum rudiments. So he didn't have to
use them. Throw me out of the band, Mr. Jazzolina. I'm going to be
an underground writer. I'm going to do it my way.
"Don't change a word," Henry Miller told Lawrence Durrell.
"They'll shit on you anyway--you might as well have your say."
I went ten rounds with Mr. Bukowski.
Melville--I'm Henry Miller.
Always merry and bright.
Keep on the sunny side.