Dinner with Caravaggio

Sigh. What a mess. Men n such. I was thinking of Hemmingway, about the raw and simple beauty of his phrasing. How one or two choppy lines in you feel the whole place and you get the guy. Homophobic womanizer and all. Probably gay. He shot himself in the head with a shotgun and died. Turned his brain to pink mist. But he made art of it (his life) and I honestly believe that he was just trying to work it out. Same as anyone does.

Sterz, Calder and I went to the Cajun place for dinner and got to talking about Chet Baker while the boy made friends with the bartender and a few of the waitresses. I know Chet’s music but little else. Sterz told the story. In the context of art, the man left a legacy. In life, thugs smashed his horn and front teeth in after drug addiction fucked him up for good. The story reminded me of Caravaggio, rumored to be a scrapper. A poor man with extraordinary talent who just couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He swaggered around sixteenth century Italy beating the shit out fools who were dumb enough to engage. Eventually he killed a guy with his rapier in a scrap in Rome and was run down by the law 10 years or so later, a violent death.

Years ago I was talking to Garth after he spied the cover of the Illiad translation I was reading. It pictured the D-Day invasion at Normandy. The thing is full of fear. Men falling dead as the transport hold opens. Someone is always the first to die and someone the last. The question was, which one would I be? Garth just knew he’d be one of the guys to get whacked in the first few seconds. I just didn’t know who I’d be and have thought about that since.

Once, on a solo backcountry trip I fell, early in during a hailstorm while scrambling a scree field in a non-blazed valley. My ankle crunched and swelled up immediately so I wrapped it tight and continued as planned. The whole trip I was in pain. That night I camped on a precipice at the summit of a tall waterfall that fed the valley. I plunged the ankle in the still pool before the fall to reduce the swelling and prayed. The prayers were soft ones. They came easy. That night my niece Sara was born. When I heard the news I wept.