The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Short and easy read with beautifully developed characters whose lives spring to vivid life and stand before your very eyes through Fitzgerald's striking and clever descriptions. The Great Gatsby tells a story of struggle to shake off the humdrum life of the upper class and all it's pretenses. In this struggle the characters briefly express their best and worst qualities in a feral attempt towards a brave existence. However, when they discover that their attempts would require a certain level of discomfort of which they are not accustom to, they quickly shun the notion of an authentic existence and lazily fall directly into the padded and dull existence that they were trying so desperately to escape.

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Train of thought...

I'm on the Northbound train to LA from SD to see my best friend Tara. You know, the mere mention of LA has the most fascinating effect on people; brows crinkle, and words of disdain unabashadley fly out. I love LA. San Diego, on the other hand is met with the gentle cooing of oooohs and ahhs, which I find difficult to relate to. Although I must admit the idyllic beach scene that is my current view is filling me with a certain appreciation that I had forgotten until now. It's interesting to me how a little distance from things you were once so absorbed in, places counting too, can give you a greater sense of appreciation. Even when a place has become down trodden and all the things around you turn brass, with a little time and distance they renew and shine again.
As we chug away from San Diego, my arm sore from air hockey and fond thoughts of friends, family and a little work on my mind, I smile and settle in with complete contentedness. I will arrive with tousled hair in jeans and flip flops and am pondering the casual and possibly lazy nature of our culture as I watch North by Northwest. My, times have changed.
48 mins in: the train scene is playing. I'm marveling at the perfect display of elegance before me. Not on my train, on theirs. Eva Saint Marie and Cary Grant. Crisp clothing, perfectly tailored, properly sized martini's and table linens in the cafe car, pure grace, hell, they still make smoking look glamorous. It's moments (and fabulous old movies) like these that lend a sense of vicarious nostalgia. The same sense that spurs my love for the more circuitous route of train travel. This is the first time I have seen the film and am pleasantly surprised by this serendipitous moment.

The Waiting Weeds

There are certain things in life that drive me crazy; waiting, relinquished hopes, and not knowing how to live more fully and suffering because of it (AKA boredom). I imagine my life without these things to be one of ease and contentedness, a life of complete certainty. I would know exactly what it would take to make each moment full and authentic. I would never sit and ponder what to do/eat/see/experience because I would be engaged in the moment, not waiting for the moment, there would be no boredom. So what is this waiting, this root that proliferates and stems angst? What is it beyond a debilitating misperception that makes me suffer? Where does it come from and how do I weed it out? Or do I just sit and watch, watch the weeds grow and maybe flower (depending on the variety), watch them as they die and turn to seed, watch the winds of change sweep them up and carry them off to grow somewhere new. Maybe the real question is, can I sit and watch without "thinking" that I am waiting?

Pushing the Dream

Things are rarely what they seem to be. The problem is, we leave little room for them to be seen any differently than the way we do. This is a case against perception when trying to relate with an outside experience, whether it be person, place or thing.

Close your eyes.
Imagine an apple.
Now, what color was the apple you imagined?
I am guessing nearly every time you think of, or imagine an apple the apple will appear to be the same color.
I am also guessing that the apple you picture is similar to an apple that you favor.
So, if you prefer crisp tart apples, you most likely imagined a green shade of apple. If you prefer sweet juicy apples you most likely imagined a variant that is green, yellow and pinkish in color. If you don't care for apples either way, perhaps you pictured the more traditional red apple, lacking in any strong flavor.
If you were talking to a teacher and she mentioned an apple maybe you may perceive the apple as being red as well, do to the age old adage of the apple on the teachers desk and it being immortalized in the hue of RED.


The above hypothesis may be true in some cases and false in others, but the point that I am illustrating is the ability to perceive things in such a manner that they will fit neatly into the constructs of our well organized minds. Our circumstances and desires strongly affect the way we perceive our "outer experience".

As we all know there are many shades, textures, flavors and sorts of apples out there. What is entirely disappointing when you transfer this analogy to everyday life and relationships is that you cannot make a green apple pink. You can sit there and tell the apple it is tart, you need it to be sweeter, it is astringent and leaves you with a dry taste in your mouth, and still the apple will be green.

We see things the way we want them to be. Not the way they want to be. We see people the way we want them to be. We see our futures as we have dreamed them to be since our birth. We leave little room for surprise or growth. We leave little room for things and people to show how they really are. What color, taste, texture. We keep mentally investing in and projecting out the same color, over and over again because it is what we want, what we know, what we can depend on. But this is rarely reality. I mean no two green apples taste exactly the same after all. But we keep buying that color anyways because it seems like we can depend on the outcome, but sometimes you take a bite and you have to squish up your face and crinkle your nose because what you bit off is so sour. Surprise. And people are the same. We construct relationships in our minds not based on the reality of the relating that is occurring in the moment, but based on the past experience and the likely hood of it continuing as you plan. This keeps us chained to an ideal that may not even be a possibility. We create beliefs about people that they do not share. We are constantly trying to project our dream and force our reality. And if something doesn't fit, well we either throw it out or simply deny it as it truly is, or we subconsciously choose to see it as we want it to be.

Now close your eyes and imagine someone you love.
How do you see them?
Do you see them as they are? Or do you see them as how they affect you?
Do you have a limited capacity for perceiving them?
Are they always the same?
Can you see them as they might see themselves?
Is it similar to the way you see them?

A guy walks into a bar....
He used to go to this bar when he was younger. Before he goes, he recalls the fun, the trouble, the excitement that has been had there. The guy is older now, more mature, more conscious, more aware. So he walks in and stays and plays remember when, and by the time he leaves he feels disappointed somehow, despite the fact that fun was had. He projected the experience before it was had and was preoccupied with the details of how it should be and totally neglected the details of how it really was. It was fun. He had fun, his friends had fun and everybody was happy.

Maybe we could all use a lesson in seeing things the way they are rather than how good or bad we want/expect them to be. This might require trying to see things from others perspectives. Or by trying to see things with beginners mind, as if you know nothing about a given situation, whether it be person place or thing.