Fishing is a
good example of a line that has movement in a wilderness situation. In fact, the
final long story in Papa Hemingway’s short story collection Big Two-hearted
River Part 1 and 2 is about a lone fishing trip.
It is a very
descriptive piece so a few quotes are in order.
Nick stood
up. He leaned his back against the weight of his pack where it rested upright
on the stump and got his arms through the shoulder straps. He stood with his
pack on his back on the brow of the hill looking out across the country toward
the distant river and then struck down the hillside away from the road.
Underfoot the ground was good walking. Two hundred yards down the hillside the
fire-line stopped. Then it was sweet-fern, growing ankle high, to walk through,
and clumps of jack pines; a long undulating country with frequent rises and
descents, sandy underfoot and the country alive again. (page 140)
Nick has hiked
from Seney, which has been burned-out, and is on the trail of trout.
It gets even
better than that as he prepares to pitch camp.
(page 143)
There’s several
pages on just boiling coffee. Nick uses the “Hopkins” method, who was a friend
who struck it rich in Texas. They were all going fishing again next summer but
never saw Hopkins again. (page 145). That could be a pointed reference
to the dollar breaking up communal bonds, as the Hop Head gave his .22 to Nick
and his camera to Bill “to remember him by.”
We live in a
world where the biggest company is a grocery, remember? Nick’s camp is very
atmospheric, colored in shades of green and dusky brown, sweet-fern smells and
ready for the kill.
There follows a
long sequence on the techniques of fishing for trout with captured grasshoppers
that went right over my head. One grisly aspect that stayed with me.
(page 151)
The impression I
got was that pitching tents and fishing have techniques that are seriously
real, but not heavy. The question is: why is the modern world so heavy?
Because a
straight-line order is applied to all aspects – including pleasure. Meaning
pleasure is supposedly an aspect of reason. But Nick’s pleasure is purely in
soaking up the indifference of nature; the drowsy grasshoppers harvested under
a log; the ferns crunching underfoot; really everything that is sensational and
atmospheric in nature.
Alongside this,
he employs techniques of hiking, pitching and fishing that are seriously real. But
nothing is heavy since he is only an interloper in the pristine wilderness of
line and movement that is Mother Nature.
In other words,
he’s experiencing reality, and applying technique to it. The two are two
different things. In a sorcerous reality, straight line reason is applied to
pleasure; meaning that the reality itself – the primal serpent of myth – is null
and void.
In Jean-Luc
Godard’s Weekend (prev) capitalism is a hole with no sexual
specifications or power (a repository). The sexual side of things comes from
reality itself; from fecundity and the predator-prey cycle.
Underlying
fecundity is the primal serpent of line and movement, which the sorcerous
reality deems null and void. Amazon can give you anything – but it can’t give
you that.
Man needs to
breed well, which means not to be told everything – in a straight-line world –
but to experience line and movement in rough areas alongside wilderness. It’s
not a case of racialism; it’s being real in a world of life and death that
breeds strength in places of rough abandon and power.
ONE PLUS ONE/SYMPATHY FOR
THE DEVIL I point you to the bookstore scene (apparently not on YouTube
owing to the smut) with no comment, as about three things are happening simultaneously (4/5 in).
Those who deny
this are just misguided, like the Vegans who jumped Biden. It’s not so
surprising, as they are bombarded by straight-line advance and logistical
economics, but it can only lead to one thing. A repository that is to all
intents a type of nothingness, physically and psychically and in terms of
psychological content and strong style.
