True at First Light

I’ve just finished my third reading of True at First Light, published in 1999. It is described as a “fictionalized memoir,” and my recent reading opened up my understanding of the book in startling ways. In significant ways it is a precursor to A Moveable Feast and an eerie foreshadowing of what was to unfold in Hemingway’s actual life: that is the serious injuries that he suffered in a real-life plane crash at the end of the trip to Africa, which gave him the material for this book. It is so revealing. He paints indelible portraits of two women, “Mary,” the name of his actual wife, and “Debba,” his fictionalized African “wife.” There is a great deal about literature, well-known writers, and a section about Paris that even includes the phrase “A Moveable Feast.”

   But, as always, there is the sustained intellectual ferocity of Hemingway’s prose – taut, precise, and unstoppably absorbing. The portraits of the landscape, the weather, hovering mount Kilimanjaro, the animals, the birds, the African characters and camp life have made this Hemingway book my all-time favorite.    Hemingway has often been accused of being unable to write about women. Read this book to refute that…

This is me practicing…..

This Burmese lady is a dance member of the famous Mustache Brothers comedy troup in Myanmar.

Hello, I will restart this journal in the coming days.

After a break of several years, I plan to restart this journal. My time has been split with other pressing duties. The most time consuming was the writing and publishing of four books.

The most recent book is titled Zen Poetry. All four books are available at Amazon books or by clicking on one of the four images at the top of this journal (see Above).

Chief among my new duties is to relearn how to use the WordPress tools to make the new journal appear the same as the older version, or as seamless, at least, as I am capable of at this stage. To say that I am “rusty” doesn’t remotely catch how intimidating the WordPress process appears to me at this stage. But this inaugural post (if completed successfully) is a heartening first step.

One thing I have committed to is to use shorter versions of many stories. The stories in the old journal will remain as they are, too many stories are ridiculously long, but the new writing will be more in line with common sense in terms of the time most readers have to give to a journal such as this.

I will be deleting many outdated addresses. Please email me if your address or other information needs updating or you wish to delete other information.

Red Pine’s Stonehouse poems

An early copy of Red Pine’s Stonehouse poems that was printed in Taiwan. It’s still in print in a modern edition.

Jim Harrison

We are each

the only world

we are going to get.

–From Returning to Earth