The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway An excerpt from Chapter One, “Old and Unlucky”
The following is a dialogue between the Old Man, Santiago and an adolescent boy, Manolin. Santiago is a Cuban fisherman who is having a run of bad luck. Manolin is Santiago’s devoted apprentice.
“Santiago,” the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. “I could go with you again. We’ve made some money.”
The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.
“No,” the old man said “You’re with a lucky boat. Stay with them.”
“But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish, and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks.”
“I remember,” the old man said. “I know you did not leave me because you doubted.”
“It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him.”
“I know the old man said. “It is quite normal.”
“He hasn’t much faith.”
” No,” the old man said.’But we have. Haven’t we?”
“Yes” the boy said…………………………………………..……………..
Faith
One definition of faith- “firm belief in something for which there is no proof” (source Merriam -Webster)
Really, I say, no proof? What does that mean? To me the proof is in the pudding! Messy to be sure. Of course you have to eat the pudding to be sure if it is good or not! For my purpose we are hiding something in our pudding, INTUITION.
My personal journey through this life has been greatly enhanced by my growing faith in my intuition. The sea, the ocean represents a portal through which I can see my dreams today becoming my tomorrow’s reality. In reality the sea itself is a metaphor of a dream that can also be a nightmare.
As Patti Smith majestically writes about the nightmare of Super Storm Sandy destroying so much of a neighborhood in Queens, Rockaway, she has faith that her newly bought home, no matter what, would give her enough to rebuild her dream. She writes of this 100 year home as her Alamo.
Excerpt from MTrain by Patti Smith
“Her Name Was Sandy”
“On All Saints’ Day, I remembered that it was Alfred Wegener’s birthday. I tried to devote a measure of my thoughts to him, but I was really with Rockaway. Bit by bit I received news. The boardwalk was gone. Zak’s cafe was gone. The train line crippled and its sad bowels ripped apart, thousands of salt-coated wires, the gone intestines of motion. Roads were closed indefinitely. No power,gas, or electricity. November winds were strong. Hundreds of homes were burned to the ground and thousands flooded.
But my little house built one hundred years ago, scoffed by realtors, condemned by inspectors, and denied insurance, had apparently stood through it. Though severely damaged my Alamo had survived the first great storm of the twenty-first century.”
Indeed her little house did give her enough to rebuild. Patti Smith’s faith- answered.
What is more reflective than the ocean’s water at my feet? Tonight it is this campfire crackling in the fire pit holding the darkness at bay. The good fairies fly to become the stars above, the bad fairies drop into their coals of hell. Their hell is our heaven as its warmth mitigates the night’s chill. Coyotes chatter, mumble almost laugh in the woods aware of us as we become aware of them.
To my right sits my wife who is negotiating with her grand daughter for a personal sit-down. “No,” her grand daughter declines her Granny’s invitation. Her mother’s lap is doing just fine.
I sip my wine.
The fairy laden camp fire crackly snaps announcing a question. A query so ageless asked by so many over eons of yesterdays.
“If God made us, everything, this earth and the stars, where can God possibly live?. Where is God right now?” This question softly introduced by the least aged of all of us sitting around the fairy fire, the laughing coyotes, and the rising full moon was as softly answered by her mother.
“Why God was everywhere, is everywhere and also lives inside you, me and everyone.”
An answer born of faith, correctly so I believe for my intuition tells me so.
Thank you for reading,
Mark