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Papa's Problem.
(4 minute read.)
The Old Man and the Cursor.
(continued… page 2 of 2)
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Afterpiece—commenting on my own imitation…
I read what it wrote… what 'I' wrote.
The machine. The thing without hands or blood or memories of Spain.
It got things right. The marlin. The rum. And there was that goddamn cursor blinking like a heartbeat you wish would stop.
And I think it thinks I want to be saved.
It thinks the problem is I spent too much time writing, not enough living. It thinks if it'd taken the weight, I'd have done more fishing. More drinking. More old and stubborn and full of grace.
Perhaps it's right.
The problem wasn't the writing. The problem was the living after. The problem was the no inspiration days when the fish didn't run and the rum didn't work and the women looked at you like a monument instead of a man. The problem was the silence between books. The problem was waking up and knowing the peak was behind you in everything you'd ever done and the best you could hope for was doing it again, worse.
The machine can write the books.
It can't live the mornings.
It can't feel the thing that makes you reach for the gun instead of the rod.
But maybe it's right after all. Maybe the answer is to let the machine have the words and take the world for yourself. Maybe the trick is to stop being Hemingway and start being the man who might have lived if he hadn't spent his whole life becoming a writer.
I don't know.
I'm dead. I've been dead a long time.
But if you're reading this—if you're the one with the cursor and the questions and the machine waiting to do your work—
Let the machine do the work.
Go outside.
The fish are running.
The rum is sweating.
The world is still there.
And the world doesn't need your book—the machine can do that. It needs you.
So go on. Shoo. Go live. The machine will keep the chair warm.
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