A Writer Needs Spring Just As He Once Needed Winter

~ The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself. ~ Ernest Hemingway
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Hemingway, of course, was projecting a bit when he expressed the sentiment quoted above. He himself was one of the very people he was talking about, someone who was ever so good at limiting happiness, his own and that of others.  I, too, value the company of people who are as good as spring itself and, in fact, as I've gotten older, I've made it a policy to limit my relationships to people who put no limits on happiness, mine or theirs.
 
In this photo, I'm with my brother in Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West, a place famous for having hosted the legendary and largely mythical Hemingway happiness for many years and I, too, was very happy to be there on a summer day enjoying a cold beer with someone who makes me happy.
 
On the other hand, people who limit happiness with a perpetual winter of their own discontent are as neccesary to a writer as they are unavoidable. Like most of us who are on the dark side of middle age, I've known my share of them. The trick is, you see, to use their cold and muddy personalities to increase your ability to engender pathos in your art--to arouse the readers ability to feel your imaginitive pain--as Hemingway did so well. So, a writer needs the winter just as he needs the spring. But now, after a few months of meteorolgical discontent, I'm ready to crawl up and out of the mud, shake off the dirty ice, and celebrate the happiness of blossoms and things warm and green and I have just three weeks to go.