pre-departure thoughts on my trip to florida

I HEART HEMINGWAY

During lunch, I went to a used book sale benefiting the DC Public Library System in search of a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which a colleague and I are going to read and discuss together like the total nerds we are, and Slaughterhouse 5, which I've never read but have always wanted to, and in light of Mr. Vonnegut's recent death, feel compelled to do so very soon. In the small Classics section, I found a copy Uncle Tom's Cabin, but they didn't have a copy of Slaughterhouse, so I compensated by purchasing a couple Hemingway books, along with a copy of Farenheit 51 and The Great Gatsby, two more classics that I have never read.

I found an old copy of my ultimate favorite book EVER, Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. The cover is all dog-eared and features a technicolor picture of a couple kissing in true 1950's Hollywood glam style, and I paid $3 for it, which is a $1.50 more than its original price as published on the cover, but that's what makes it even better. I have already read it fifty times, and I will read it 1,000 more times before I die. I am completely in love with the main character, Frederick Henry, who is the toughest, most masculine creature ever imagined, and hope someday to marry a real-life Frederick Henry.

Then I got The Hemingway Reader, which is a collection of excerpts from some of his novels and some short stories. Although I'm on the last 50 pages of Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father, which I wanted to have completed by the time I leave for Florida, I just couldn't stop myself from cracking into this one. It starts with an excerpt from "In Our Time," where our friend Nick Adams returns home from war and hikes through the hills of Michigan by himself. There's something about Hemingway's male characters that just makes my heart ache. I want to reach into the book and pull Nick Adams out and hug him and kiss him and stroke his hair, although he's apparently doing quite allright by himself hiking through the pines and crushing the sweet fern in his hands so he can smell like it while he boils his pork and beans in a tin pan.

Anyway, if you're still with me, the connection to Florida is that Missmo and I are planning on going to Key West, where I will have the unsurpassable pleasure of being in the same room in which Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms and even be able to look at the very typewriter on which my hero, Fredrick, was created. It will be a religious experience for me, and I simply cannot wait.

SPEAKING OF BARACK

On Sunday, I will attend my first political rally, which will be for Barack Obama. I plan to be really inspired by his words, and perhaps get close enough to ask him to sign my worn paperback copy of Dreams From My Father. "Senator Obama? Will you please sign my paperback book? Be careful not to pull the cover for it is already halfway ripped off. Also? I love you."

FUCK WINTER.

It will be 30 degrees in DC when I leave tomorrow morning. Two hours later, I will step of the plane into an 80 degree haze of sea salt that only tourists (now me) can smell. I can't fucking wait.