Brian Michael Barbeito | Mixed Bag (3x)
Formative. Cat Stuff. Photography. Plucked from the coalitionist mixed bag.
FORMATIVE: Discovering Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea
I don’t know exactly how old I was. I think around fourteen or fifteen. It was a used copy and I opened and began reading. There are many people, obviously, that love that book. And many scholars more apt to talk about it than I am. But that’s just the thing in a way. When a work is resonating with the viewer or reader or listener, the fact that other people know about it also, doesn’t matter one way or the other. The work has succeeded in finding its way to a sort of heart-space. One feels against logic and reason as if they were the first ever to discover it. And how I loved and cherished the book right away. I would go on to read other books, and also literary biographies like the most recent as far as I know, by Mary Dearborn, who does simply excellent biographies. It’s enriching to read Hemingway’s work and learn about his life. But there is something about those early moments when one feels as if they alone discovered the thing and new worlds present themselves. I can see the cover and remember carrying the book in my pants pocket and sometimes in my army surplus jacket, maybe next to my yellow Sony Walkman. Riding on the bus, reading, sometimes glancing out the window. I would find others that I felt like that about. Enthralled. Captivated. But that was one of the first certainly. Treasure. I had found a golden treasure.
CAT PROFILE: Paws the Cat
Paws is an old spirit that we rescued from a rural antique store housed in a too old lonesome barn-type dwelling. It was late autumn and we stopped in on the way back from somewhere. Suddenly Paws showed up at the side door of the van when we opened it. He was too thin and begging for food, which we gave him. I asked the cashier if he was anyone's as though I wanted to rescue him, I didn't want to inadvertently steal someone's cat. The lady said, 'Please take him. He might be loosely affiliated with some farm a far way down the way, but nobody cares and he won't make it through the winter I'll tell you that. It's too rugged out here, and there is nothing but fields and forests.' I understood. So Paws the abandoned starving cat came home with us and has led a nice life. He is kind and wise and still alive and well in his forever home. He was always well cared for and it felt like the cosmos sent him to us. That antique place closed down forever soon after and nothing replaced it. So, he would have really had nowhere to go around or find a home with good people as nobody would be even stopping by there.
AND NOW, PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN!
Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian poet and photographer. When I Hear the Night is a second compilation of prose poems and pictures forthcoming from Dark Winter Press (May 2025).