Day276 - Return to Gatsby

I recently finished reading The Great Gatsby for the second time in 6 months. No less enamored, I consider this book to be one of my great loves. It was life-changing the first time, in that it spoke to me in a most familiar tongue, as if I were having a conversation with my own internal monologue. I knew then that it was the template, the yardstick for my own writing & that when I came to write my own novel, I would aspire to be even a shadow of this; the absolute pinnacle, where words are elevated above mere syllables, into poetry.

As with returning to a lover, there was anticipation of the known and excitement at the prospect of discovering something new this time. Sure enough this was the case. Some of my favorite passages from last time did not hit me with the same impact, but others that had previously washed over me, seeped deeper, into the cracks of my consciousness...

"they had never been closer in their month of love nor communicated more profoundly one with another than when she brushed silent lips against his coat shoulder, or when he touched the end of her fingers gently, as if she were asleep"

"You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver. Well I met another bad driver, didn't I?"

"...I'll make you a mint julep, then you won't seem so stupid to yourself".

And one of my favourite lines:

"He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand."

which leads into the following, molten poetry:

"...One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees — he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete."

/a most satisfied sigh.

Once more, immediately after reading I didn't want to read anything else; purely uninterested. I will wait until the glow fades, until it's no longer fresh in mind, because as of then I will have processed the beauty in its entirety and will reflect upon it with only fond and further enlightened eyes.

I look forward to next time, Gatsby.

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Not sure why, but this song seems to fit the post:

The Black Crowes - She Talks to Angels

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