Key West, FL

January 19 2025

Notes

I went to the Hemingway House to read The Old Man and the Sea and to write. The 6-toed cats are meaner than the 5-toed ones, I imagine they’re in pain or they’re exhausted from being gawked at and chased around all day. I frequently think about Katy Perry’s “Ur So Gay.” I bought a composition book covered in sharks with wings.

The Old Man and the Sea forced me to think about the pitfalls of yearning, I kept thinking there is no better time I could be reading this. Nobody understood what I meant and Ernest Hemingway probably wouldn’t have either. Much like Vincent Gallo’s depictions of general desperation, I’m certain he had no interest or intention of making any kind of actually profound comment on being a woman in love or whatever but he fell into it sideways to great effect.

Is it true you only see Desire as a sylph figured creature who changes her mind?

Outside of this fake life where I walk to the tiki bar like every bloated cruise ship tourist, I’m still being dragged out to sea, contemplating cutting my lacerated hand off as punishment for not cooperating with my pathetic incapacity to know when I’ve been beat. I’ve only seen a marlin like that once before or once and a half or maybe it was a trick of the light, and the half is seeking something else. I take too much and what I give has no value, but I have discipline and patience. Patience better applied would wait closer to shore to catch something I could actually keep, or at least I’d waste the same amount of time. Often dreams are by nature out of reach. I’ve had an unlucky streak.

How do you burn a bridge? Beyond death… your visit is unwelcome but that makes you too early, not too late.

Time isn’t the only source of terror.