The Messes We Make of Our Lives is coming soon! So here is an out of context excerpt....
In the Hemingway story “Now I Lay Me,” Nick Adams, wounded and in a hospital, is afraid of the dark and he is afraid of going to sleep—he is afraid of many things. To stay awake and pass the time, he re-fishes all of his favorite streams. I tried that. I tried pulling out everything I had internalized over the years—all the people I had known, everyone who had ever damaged me or helped me or even talked to me, all the places I had been. I tried living—or dying, maybe—like a Hemingway hero, re-fishing not just my favorite and best-loved and best-remembered rivers, but re-driving my favorite streets and roads, too, and re-drinking my favorite bars, and re-listening to all the stories people had told me—re-living all the things that had been a part of me and were all now nothing but me, and I escaped my poor health and my poverty and I got back out on the road, driving in the city, the country, the mountains, driving everywhere, getting away from everything by dropping my Self and becoming everything and everyone.
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