Where is Lucas?

I haven’t found myself writing on this blog for quite a while.  I figure I should devote a few minutes and write where I am and what I’m currently doing.

I am living in Montreal with my girlfriend.  Starting next week I will be studying French in an intensive program, and today, I start my job at the Keg.  I’m planning my future misadventures and trying to enjoy my life and my short time in this charming city.

I have been reading like its my job to do so.  Mostly Hemmingway and Steinbeck.  There is something so captivating about the lives of these two authors, and of course, their brilliant works.  I’m unsure why the Lost Generation writers speak to me on such a personal level.  Maybe it’s because they write stories about the triumphs of the human spirit over the adversities of the world, the dignity in degradation, the struggle to overcome ones demons, or maybe it’s the authors’ biographies that stir me.  Hemmingway lived a life of mythos, and though it was short (he committed suicide on his Idaho ranch at the age of 61), he lived more experiences and survived more death-defying exploits than most could even imagine.   For me, the sympathies that those of the Lost Generation captured with their words have never ended.  I feel more at home perusing the pages of these books than the city of my birth.  They evoke weird sensations in me.  I want to sell all my worldly belongings and see how far I can get on my empty stomach and my calculated wits.  I want to get punched in the face for my principles.  I want to get arrested.  I want to be exiled.  I want to write something dangerous and compelling.

Here's just a taste of what I'm ranting about:

Afterward I went to bed and when they were all asleep and she was sure they would not call she came in.  I loved to take her hair down ans she sat on the bed and kept very still, except suddenly she would dip down and kiss me while I was doing it, and I would take out the pins and lay them on the sheet and it would be loose and I would watch her while she kept very still and then take out the last two pins and it would all come down and she would drop her head and we would both be inside of it, and it was the feeling of inside a tent or behind a falls.

Ernest Hemmingway – A Farewell to Arms – p.114.

and…

…Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among the ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe.  But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.

John Steinbeck – East of Eden – p.280

and finally…

Names are a great mystery.  I’ve never known whether the name is molded by the child or the child changed to fit the name.  But you can be sure of this–whenever a human has a nickname it is proof that the name given him was wrong…

John Steinbeck – East of Eden – p. 261

I will try to write more often…I promise.