The Jazz Age Redux

 "And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

 Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Thus ends a superb novel by F Scott Fitzgerald an early 20th century author who was both a literary genius and a totally self destructive insane train wreck of a man. His book The Great Gatsby while written in 20's America, still rings true about people today. If you get a chance at least watch the movie (several versions, my favorite is the Baz Luhrman one) and then read the book. It is powerful and it really gets to the core of who we are are as people, how we live, love and survive (or not). Check it out.

Be good to each other,

Peace out.

Dear Diary

 21st century ... doesn't do it for me. I gravitate towards early 20th century thinking and experiences.. I'm fascinated by what Getrude Stein called The Lost Generation. Life was different then. Not without it's problems, as a matter of fact in the first 20 years of the century, the world suffered horribly under it's own pandemic. It killed many millions, this coming after what they called the Great War (World War 1 for us) in which millions more perished. Coming out of those events the depression brought world economies to their knees. An entire generation lost everything including any chance of dreaming of a better future. And yet, I feel an affinity for that period in history. Was it better? Demonstrably NO. Different though. People learned to adjust and to get by. Doing without in ways we can hardly imagine today. It was an important period. Absent was the spoiled self centered persons who inherit this new millennium. 

My heroes from those years. The Hemingway's, The F Scott Fitzgerald's, Smart, brilliant, able to explain  about what was going on in their writings.  Each totally screwed up, eventually succumbing to the times in which they lived. Still, to me, fascinating.

I wish I could have been there. Lived it. All of it. 21st Century ... does not do it for me.

Big Rock Candy Mountains

An Example of the popular songs from back in the day. 
Fantasies of life ..simpler ... to dream about .

Fin