Ernest At My Command

October 23, 2007 in Uncategorized | No comments

“Best of all he loved the fall
The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods
Leaves floating on the trout streams
And above the hills
The high blue windless skies
Now he will be a part of them forever”
– Ernest Hemingway

My thinking here isn’t really thinking at all, more like a consciousness of a stream of emotion. So here goes.

Color has a profound impact on my memory. October in Idaho is a palette of gray and tawney on cerulean. Looking out my window this morning my breath was taken away by the color of the sky. My favorite shade of blue is an October sky. Papa was writing about this corner of the world when he wrote that eulogy for his hunting buddy; a eulogy he delivered in the same cemetery he is buried in himself. I’ve never been a big Hemingway fan but I am very fond of that particular bit of prose.

October is also when my big slide into they abyss began. Now my favorite blue is tinted sad because by this time last year I had full knowledge of the truth about my disease. In less than two months that knowledge would have moved from my head to my heart. Now cerulean is ‘first step’ blue. Now they will be a part of me forever.