The Elderly Fellow and the Ocean
by Steve Armstrong and Ernest Hemingway
Around 2010, when I finished The Communist Manifesto in English with all Words Functioning as Nouns Removed except for the Title and Introduction in order to Make It Formally Consistent with the Theory of Dialectical Materialism I was so pleased with the result that I started looking around for another tedious project that would be equally as clever and insightful. It then occurred to me, “Why not take Ernest Hemingway‘s Old Man and the Sea, and rewrite it sentence by sentence, but replace everything possible with a synonym?” I quickly found out there are only so many ways to say “fish”. Eventually, I convinced myself that there wasn’t a good enough reason to be doing this, so here’s The Elderly Fellow and the Ocean as far as I got.
The Elderly Fellow and the Ocean
He was an elderly fellow who angled unaccompanied in a small sailboat in the Caribbean current and he had been unsuccessful for almost three months. For the initial one and one third months, a lad had assisted him. But after this time of catching nothing, the lad's mother and father informed him that the elderly fellow was extremely unlikely to be serendipitous. They instructed him to go in a different vessel and as it turned out they caught a trio of more than adequate denizens of the sea in seven days. The young fellow was saddened to perceive the elderly fellow return daily in his small sailboat without a catch and without fail, he met him to assist with hauling the rolled up ropes or the large hook with a wooden handle or the small whaling iron and the canvas twisted about the sail-post. The canvas had been repaired by using bags that had previously contained pulverized wheat and when wound around the mast they appeared to be the banner of an abiding lack of victory.
The elderly fellow was somewhat emaciated with significant crevasses in the dorsal region just below his head. The irregular sienna spots of the benign epidermal rogue cell growth induced by solar radiation bouncing off the semi-equatorial ocean were on his jowls. The spots were distributed over much of the left and right of his visage and his metacarpi had profound blemishes from manipulating massive scaly sea denizens on the ropes. But none of these blemishes were new. They were as ancient as a water-carved landscape in an arid zone without sea creatures.
He was elderly looking in every way, but not including his organs of vision, plus they shared the colour of the ocean, and were merry and unvanquished.
“Saint-James,” the lad ventured while they scaled the rise above the landing place of his vessel. “I am able to accompany you once more. We have gained lucre.”
The elderly fellow had elucidated fishing to the lad and the lad had feelings for him the same as those appropriate between a son and his father.
The elderly fellow declined, “You are presently on a vessel with good fortune. Remain with those people.”
“Indeed recall when there were fourscore and six occasions wherein no sea creatures were snagged but following this you and I hauled in large specimens continuously for twenty one days.”
“I recall,” uttered the elderly fellow. “I am aware that your interrupted presence is unrelated to a lack of faith.”
“Father forced my departure. My youth demands my compliance”
“Acknowledged,” the elderly fellow replied. “But this is how things usually are.”
“He lacks surety.”
“Agreed,” the elderly fellow replied. “Nonetheless, you and I possess faith. Isn’t that so?”
“Affirmative,” spoke the lad. “I’d like to buy you an ale on the Patio, following that I’ll help you get your gear to your residence.”
“That sounds nice,” the elderly fellow answered. “As fishing equals.”
The two of them found chairs on the Patio but numerous colleagues indicated they found the elderly fellow worthy of jokes but he was not provoked. Some of the more seasoned colleagues noticed and felt remorse. They kept this feeling to themselves and their conversation remained focused on the movement of the water, their activities, how the elements had remained favourable, and what seemed noteworthy. The lucky ones had arrived previously, gutted their billfish and hauled them on a pair of boards with a couple of fishermen straining from the weight at the extremities of each board to the waiting area for the vehicle that would take them to be sold in the capital of Cuba. Others had landed large finned fish higher on the food chain and delivered them to the facility across the bay and here they were hung, gutted, de-finned, sharkskin removed, and their meat sliced and laid in salt. When a breeze crossed the cove, the aroma of the facility was inescapable; but on this occasion the redolence was quite attenuated because the breeze had changed direction and then ceased altogether making it bright and agreeable on the Patio.
“Saint-James,” spoke the lad.
“Uh-huh,” the elderly fellow replied. He held his beer and was considering the past.
“I would like to catch some bait for you tomorrow.”
“You would do better going to the diamond for a game with bats and balls. I remain capable of paddling plus my assistant will cast.” The End.
I got the photo from https://englishbookgeorgia.com/blogebg/happy-birthday-ernest-hemingway/ I don’t know where they got the photo, and I’m not going to worry about it.