Hemingway’s Cut
A Name and a Place
A man does not change the name of a thing without a reason. A gulf is a gulf, and men have known it as Mexico’s for hundreds of years. Now men in offices, men who have never seen the water, change its name with the press of a button. They call it America’s now. The name rolls out across screens, across maps that live in pockets and hands. Some men cheer, some men curse. The water does not care.
They say it is about pride. They say it is about who owns what, about lines drawn on paper and in minds. But the fishermen still go out at dawn, and the sea still takes some of them. It does not care what name they give it.
The Men Who Decide
A man who makes decisions from behind a desk is different from the man who makes them at sea. The men at Apple, like the men at Google before them, sit in fine chairs. They say this is the right thing to do. They say America should have its name on the water. But the water does not belong to them.
Out in the Gulf, the real Gulf, men pull nets from the deep. They do not ask what name the map gives to the water. They ask if the catch is good, if the storm will hold off, if the engine will run another day. The lines on a screen do not matter to them.
The maps will change, and men will talk. But the sea will keep its own name, the one it has always had.
