Period Piece

Sometimes I think of Ernest Hemingway. He must have gotten it, how every story ended meant that a man cleaned a gun good, loaded it with a fist of bullets, and licked the always open for business end of the barrel. Every story meant that while there was a man who did this, he did not pull the trigger. This is a specific knowledge because it is not equivalent to its obverse, that every unfinished story meant a man did swallow a bullet. While that is a possibility, an unfinished story may also mean many things. Some of those things may bear the stink of merely staying alive. Just something akin to surviving. But an ended story is definite. One thing. Meant someone tried his hand at death. Meant someone was a coward, was fundamentally scared of cutting his story short. This may be what Hemingway got. He who took pride in being a brave man. But it is only sometimes when I think of Ernest Hemingway. Just some of those sometimes when I think of him ultimately taking pride.