QUESTION:

Are you a swinger or monogamous with words?

I watched 'Hemingway and Gellhorn' last night. Twice, back to back- and it's a two and a half hour film.

I didn't know!

About Gellhorn. And word monogamy.

I've read Hemingway- I've come across her name many times. I'm sure of it. (I tried to think of the last time I'd read him or heard about him and her- and... I couldn't... apart from the odd quote from, or mention of one of his book titles.)

Sometimes... as one who's read so many books... sometimes I may in fact be lying if I say I've read this or that. Only because I know through other means the gist of the stories. I am admitting a flaw here: My mind sometimes assumes I've read books, since I know about them?

I can offer NO other excuse for living the past life not knowing, however.

That I was her.

She reinforced what I've always both suspected and feared: I am no fiction writer.

I write what I live.

What I see, what I do, where I am, who I am with, what we see together, how we are together... I write from my eyes. Not my imagination.

Yet I can imagine. I have hundreds of imaginary stories in my head- here's one: Some device is set off and every living thing on earth below a certain height above sea-level (everything except whatever/whoever is on long distance flights that moment and at a particular height) is obliterated. Poof. Gone.

You can imagine the rest... Confusion/fear in those planes overhead as all contact is lost... as well as communication and guidance systems... Those who do manage to land, do so in a completely different world- the opposite of what we have today: Abundance at the cost of almost all of humanity.

But what is abundance... if no one can get the 'system' to work? We are so inter-dependent and so totally dependent on this system- we essentially return to the Dark Ages- only this time in... luxurious surrounds and comforts... now of little value. (No power, no water- I mean you can take it the whole way and create nuclear winter...)

Okay, I'll stop here. (One of you might pick up this idea and run with it- that would be something!)

I can't do it.

It sits in my head, the entire story and its many possibilities; as do many, many other stories. But they're just stories I tell myself! I don't 'care' to write about them. I don't care to 'write' about them.

Therein is the answer for me: I have to live- to write.

I have to feel. Do, be, say, think, discuss, expound, question... most of all, question. And see with my eyes.

Why I walked in Gellhorn's skin those five hours. I discovered a haven in her. I relaxed. The pressure to be 'a writer' and the confusion of WHO I was as a writer... melted away.

I accepted, finally, what I have always known: I cannot write Fiction... because I am a Non-Fiction writer. And- that feeling of... not quite being a writer because I held Hemingway and his 'imaginary' stories as the ideal?

I said "Fuck off!" to that.

Because of Gellhorn.

I've never read any of her work. I didn't know WHO she was prior to this film. She certainly was no Hemingway...

But she found me. And she told me what I most needed to hear: I am not a swinger. I am monogamous with words. And it's okay to be this kind of writer.

How about you guys and gals? Are you swingers? Can you write stories from your heads and from your eyes?