Amanda-Leigh Releases The Big Fish

I was introduced to Ernest Hemingway in high school. At the time, biographies of famous writers and their stories did not make sense to me. When my class and I were assigned to read short biographies and their stories, there would be a small groan inside of me. What was the point in having to read this stuff? This question should seem immature to those of us who now take writers biographies and their famous pieces of literature seriously.

When I began keeping an active journal after suffering from blood clots and a hysterectomy, I was led to read biographies. Before I entered the hospital, I was prescribed the combination of Celexa and Risperdal by a nurse practitioner that was referred to me by my husband’s psychiatrist at the time. I stayed up reading a book by Maya Angelou. I also read a book about a cheating husband whose ex-wives formed a bond of sisterhood. My husband heard me laugh at the women’s unconventional friendships. We sure did have great fun with that adventure.

The biography that has my mind spinning is over Ernest Hemingway. I read up to page eighty in Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved and Lost, 1934-1961 by Paul Hendrickson and Hemingway: The Final Years by Michael Reynolds. The following findings are my perspective of each biography:

·         In the beginning of Hemingway’s Boat, Hendrickson provides readers with the relationship Ernest Hemingway had with two of his three sons. Patrick (“Mouse”) and Gregory (“Gigi”) were interviewed by former Washington Post writer Paul Hendrickson. What happened to the eldest son, Jack (“Mr. Bumby”)? Were there not letters Jack sent to his father twice a month while growing up? The lack of this relationship left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

The strained relationship Ernest Hemingway had with his son Gregory, sometimes called Gloria, was out in the open in the beginning. Hendrickson addressed a letter Ernest Hemingway wrote about his disgraced son. I found this to be a distasteful approach to the youngest son. Airing dirty laundry is not something I find to be a good read.

·         The history of the Wheeler family’s boat business, where Ernest Hemingway purchased his boat, Pilar, was featured in-depth. Everything anybody ever wants to know about the boat business is written down within the first eighty pages of the book. My literary taste buds became bored.

·         Ernest Hemingway shared a close and personal friendship with F. Scott Fitzgerald. This relationship turned me off of the book completely. From research and reading biographies over the Fitzgeralds, I learned that Fitzgerald was not an honest writer. He did not exhibit moral character. He had affairs that his beautiful wife, Zelda, had to suffer with. Fitzgerald was like Edgar Allen Poe who tortured his mistresses.

·         Michael Reynolds’ Hemingway: The Final Years provides an in-depth perspective on the man Ernest Hemingway was. The man Hemingway turned out to be reminds me of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem called “The Fish.” In her poem, the fish is one every fisherman has tried to catch but to no avail. The fishermen wound up looking beyond the fish’s exterior and throwing it back in the sea. The fishermen move on and do not warn other fellow fishermen of this physically strong fish. The fishermen are to fend for themselves and lean that this fish can be caught by their hooks but never brought to surface and commit to being one fisherman’s prize. So, the fish is always thrown back into the stream of water waiting on some other fisherman to play his game.

·         Reynolds’ image of Hemingway as a family man is non-existent. The three sons are mentioned throughout the book but not necessarily above the surface. The sons did not take center stage in Hemingway’s life the way his women did. Reynold’s description of the sons is a bit vague. In the beginning, the sons are mentioned more frequently. In the end, we learn that the boys grow up and are married. There are important pieces of information missing from the book. I am left with the missing question of whether or not Hemingway attended his sons’ weddings, births of his grandchildren, and how he felt about his sons. Was Hemingway proud of his sons – those who still spoke to him?

·         Ernest Hemingway followed the steps of his Father, Dr. Clarence Hemingway, during the last year of his life. Both men were admitted to St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, New York. Ernest Hemingway underwent a series of electroshock treatments (ECT) under the care of a doctor named Dr. Rome. Hemingway’s fourth wife, Mary Walsh Hemingway, found an institution that had recreational activities as a part of therapy. In the end, Dr. Rome wound up not taking Mary’s loving care for her husband seriously and released his recovered patient. Hemingway manipulated his doctor into believing he was well. After being released, Ernest Hemingway shot himself with his favorite gun.

This is a lot of information to absorb for one woman. I did not know what I was getting myself into when I picked out Ernest Hemingway’s biographies. I thought Hemingway would have been a loving, caring husband and father figure. I was completely wrong. Being friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald, I should have realized his ways would rub off on Hemingway. Both men wound up disrespecting the marital bed and humiliating their wives in public. Both men suffered from the debilitating diseases of alcoholism and depression.

I am surprised Hemingway’s four wives did not wind up shooting him. Some modern women would have. When a heart is tossed around, stretched to the limit, and shattered into pieces, there is really no predicting how a woman will react. I do give three of the Hemingway wives credit for being strong enough to walk away from the big fish in the water. Hemingway’s biographies can be taken as a warning for strong women of our world. There is absolutely nothing wrong with walking away from a fish nobody wants to catch. I am releasing this fish back into the water where he belongs. My hook has no time for his jaws to latch onto, nor do I have any patience for his games. 

The Fish

By Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown rose
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Amanda-Leigh Supports the Mayor of Pennsylvania

This morning after reading a report over Pennsylvania's Mayor Cassandra Coleman surviving a DVT, I found a comment that surprised me. I could not tell the poster’s gender nor his or her age. The poster seemed very upset that Mayor Coleman’s personal friend, Representative Phyllis Mundy, is wanting to create an awareness on her friend’s new lifelong diagnosis of keeping blood clots from entering her body. Point taken. So, those of who have been in Mayor Coleman’s shoes should stop our fight to save other men and women’s lives? We should make this our number one priority each day? We should not create signs and posters that provide statistics and facts about blood clots?

The poster is right about one thing. We do have digital technology that informs our public on blood clots. This lacks real in-depth education. Facts from medical journals and leading research hospitals do not provide the public with survivor’s stories or our tips we have learned from our traumatic experiences. Traumatic is one word I use to describe my two experiences with blood clots. When I read this comment, I felt refreshed on why I create an awareness of blood clots. I had begun to wonder why I felt so passionate about creating an awareness. Years have passed since I have been hospitalized. I have befriended other women who have been in my shoes. This is considered networking and reaching out for assistance.

When I entered the Emergency Room on the afternoon of July 23, 2010, something happened to me that I cannot explain today. I realized my life was too short for having regrets. I had not completed college at the time. I have my Associates degree in Liberal Studies, and I will soon be working on my Bachelor’s of Arts in Liberal Arts with an English concentration. I could not eat salads or anything with vitamin k while on the blood thinner. I eat salads daily along with those other delicious green vegetables. I felt like a failure that day. Now I do not. I still battle with severe depression. I still have nightmares from that time period and before. I still feel like I broke my promise to myself about not ever taking medicine again. The one medicine I did take landed me in the Emergency Room with both a PE and a DVT. Perhaps that was my punishment for being so misguided in my life and dropping out of college during my twenties. This is something I will never know. Why did blood clots happen to me?

This is why strong advocates fight for other people’s health and security each day. We do not personally know the people who may have a genetic trait to the blood clotting disorder. We feel as if we have a mission to serve and protect our communities by creating an awareness. We have our critics who think we should keep silent. Keeping silent was what landed us in the Emergency Room to begin with. When nobody comes forward and provides a personal testimony, other people suffer the same way. We do not have a light guiding us down a dark tunnel. We do not know what to do or how to respond to this situation. We suffer in silence.

My husband’s paternal grandmother passed away from a blood clot in 1995. My husband has been affected by blood clots. This is why I work out and try to live right. I do not wish to pass away from blood clots. I remember the sadness my husband felt when he watched me suffer greatly from blood clots. My husband would have made his grandmother proud. I do feel sadness that he could not sit by his grandmother’s side and feed her the way I fed my grandfather when he suffered from a stroke in 1995.

Suffering is not something I wish for anybody’s life. To watch somebody strong physically and then become paralyzed is also traumatizing. My grandfather suffered a series of strokes and he never recovered. Up until then, I believed Granddaddy to be immortal. No illness or disease could ever take Granddaddy away from me. He would be around forever. He would always be feeding his cows or bailing hay. He would always attend the First Baptist Church on Sunday mornings and return home to his lovely wife’s home-cooking. He would be there to watch his grandchildren and great grand-children’s life events. This is the image I love when I think about my Granddaddy. Why did a stroke have to happen to him? He was a wonderful Southern gent who stood by his family through thick and thin.

As I have written several times in the past, I strongly believe that education will best eliminate ignorance in our society. Yes, we have wonderful digital technology that brings public awarenesses of heart disease, cancer, disabilities, and so much more. Several survivors of these ailments have taken stands to provide personal journeys about their struggles and skills necessary for achieving hope.  This is what digital technology lacks. This world has made more sense to me since getting in touch with networks of women who have been in my shoes and reading articles over other blood clot survivors. We will always have critics who disagree with our paths. I look for comfort from those who have been down my path. Where will this path take me? How can I help other people with the information I have discovered?

Amanda-Leigh's Recommended Link:

State Gives New Attention to Deep Vein Thrombosis

http://www.timesleader.com/news/local-news/349402/State-gives-new-attention-to-deep-vein-thrombosis

Amanda-Leigh's First Visit with Robert Browning

Happy Monday! This is the first day of Spring Break for most of the residents in my college town. I wish these residents a safe, blessed, and peaceful break. May their minds be able to rest for at least a week. May their teachers and professors be able to unwind and enjoy time with their friends and family members. This is the time for everybody to throw their mathematic and biology textbooks aside and put on a different role for the changing season.

I have been reading Clyde De L. Ryal’s The Life of Robert Browning. One thing that has not been written is the feeling of guilt Robert Browning has for choosing to walk away from embracing all of the beliefs of Percy Shelley. Growing up, Browning excelled better from the education of his parents. Mrs. Browning seemed to be like my maternal grandmother in the gardening aspect. She taught her young son about plants and nature. His father, Robert Sr., taught his son different languages. When this son did attend school, he was sent home because the school did not wish to shame the other male students.

This meant the Brownings had to find a school for their gifted son to attend. In the meantime, Robert basked in the glory of Percy Shelley’s readings of absolutism. What is absolutism exactly? When I think of absolutism, I do not like the meaning I find. Absolutism is fixed. Absolutism does not leave room for change. There is no room for a student’s horizons to be broadened the way Bronson Alcott’s Socrates style of teaching enhanced young students’ minds. Had this young Romantic English poem been a hungry student in Mr. Alcott’s class, perhaps his path in the world would have taken a different turn. If this scenario had happened, would Browning have still written the beautiful lyrics of “My Last Duchess”?  

When I read this biography, I get a sense of mixed feelings. For one, I am not too impressed by John Stuart Mills criticism of Robert Browning’s first work. Mills’ harsh review had been rejected by several news outlets. Reflecting back to Alfred Lord Tennyson’s first poetry, I remember reading where John Stuart Mills’s criticism shut him down in a way as a poet. Perhaps I am being too harsh in my own criticism of Mills. I feel that words should be expressed if the mood creates them. Great poets do not need to be criticized by religious or political authority. When I read where Mills had written a bad review of Browning, I thought, Oh no. He's at this again. Please leave these bright poets alone. Not again!

Maybe this form of negative criticism of the poet turned him to the writings of Percy Shelley during his childhood years. Shelley became a positive role model for young Robert Browning. As time passed and Browning found his way in the world, the more he outgrew the teachings of Shelley. He began to realize that Shelley was wrong about certain ideas and thoughts. This betrayal is reflected in some of Browning’s early work. Browning still reflected on his pure wholesome days of reading Shelley with great fondness. The man may have matured but the boy was still alive and active. Shelley's fatherly guidance never left Browning in a literary sense.

When I was reunited with my junior high English teacher a few years ago, I began to read famous works by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I would read these works and feel bedazzled by his words. I loved the images Fitzgerald created in my mind. I felt intimate with the beauty of literature. This made me want to read a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The biography opened up my eyes. I could not believe a husband betrayed his own wife by stealing work from her personal journal. This act disgusted me. I no longer saw F. Scott Fitzgerald larger than life. I saw F. Scott Fitzgerald for what he was: a fraud and a plagiarist.

I understand exactly how Robert Browning felt in relation to his literary role model, Percy Shelley. Even today, I still have a sense of guilt. I feel guilty because I outgrew the starry eyes for F. Scott Fitzgerald, who helped me find my place in literature. Browning became a famous poet thanks to reading the writings of Shelley. We both outgrew our literary role models. In a way, we may have betrayed them. Knowing that Fitzgerald used his wife’s brilliant mind, I can never go back to being that starry eyed fan again. I do not wish to be taken for a fool. I have grown up. I have matured. Fitzgerald was the one who dropped out of college and never returned.

As much as I enjoy reading the writings of Browning, I am disappointed that he did not apply himself as one of the first rosters to attend The London University. I also understand why Browning dropped out. The 1800s did not have the advancement of modern technology or honors programs at colleges. This hindered the academic progress of student curriculum. There was no alternative that made Browning feel challenged as a student. With Browning’s tragic history of being sent home from school for being too bright, we are unable to get a first-hand glimpse into the emotional damage this caused. Perhaps Browning would have excelled best with online college work the way I do.

In the online college environment, there are no outside demands placed on a student. When the weather is bad, I do not have to e-mail professors that I am unable to attend classes. I do not have to rush and get ready each day. I am able to be stress-free of an environment that creates anxiety for me. I feel nervous around a class full of students. I feel self-conscience. Nobody else in the room has a physical disability. I do not like to stand out. I prefer the online classroom environment because I feel safe and at peace. This is where I do not feel the disability in me. This feeling provides the musical instrument I need to succeed. I am able to take comfort that I am not alone.