This month is hard. Even if you’re not waiting for anything from life, like word from grad school, you’re waiting for spring. The only way to experience February is to find a project that defines the month instead of seeing the four weeks go by in cold days. So this month, I’m only reading Ernest Hemingway.
My idea of Ernest Hemingway, before having read him, was that he was this serious, grim writer, so I thought a moveable feast was some sad thing that stays with you after the war, like herpes. But really, the title comes from a letter Hemingway sent to a friend, describing his experience in Paris: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
In a month like this, it’s important to remember our own moveable feasts, like coming home to a dog as a child, running in the park as spring is blooming and reading sentences like “when the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.” Let’s just hope that’s not what happens this year.