Some Words

"Can't you possibly be just a little bit glad that we are alive, and that all the year that's coming we can be together and work and love and get some peace for all the things we've paid so much for learning. Stop looking for solace: there isn't any..."
                      --Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

The End-All

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"I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity and her flaming self-respect and it's these things I'd believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all that she should be....I love her and that's the beginning and end of everything." --F. Scott Fitzgerald

I've always been intrigued by the idea of someone's only redeeming trait being love. It came to me while reading Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff and Cathy--him more than her--are only admirable because of their intense, and I believe, pure love. Despite the greatness of their love, it spoils their lives and hurts those around them. I think the power of love is hard for humans to handle. It makes them feel invincible, but it's not enough to save them from themselves and the demons they let in.

I just finished a biography on the life and marriage of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald by Kendall Taylor that got me thinking abut this again. It's called Sometimes Madness is Wisdom: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald: A Marriage, and I highly recommend it. Through reading his novels and short stories, I have felt similar to the Fitzgeralds. I want grandeur and adventure and acceptance. I see myself in both of them after learning more about their lives. Zelda was a great dancer and worked to get to a professional level in her late twenties. I wish I could afford to train in dance or gymnastics in this same way. She also saw the world in a magnificent light with a quirky sense of things; something I think I also foster in my own quiet way. I think Scott and I have similar views on the privileged rich. They get to be reckless and eccentric with fewer consequences. I've just never encountered someone that lit me up like they did each other or ignited the desire to let everything go and conquer the world. That I feel I need a partner to do this is the Scott in me--nervous and lacking courage to be confident.

"I am so outrageously clever that I believe I could be a whole world to myself--if I didn't like living in daddy's better." --Zelda Fitzgerald.

If you have any intentions of reading Tender is the Night and don't want the ending spoiled, stop reading this post. There will be major spoilers. The ending killed me. Dick Diver is a psychiatrist who fell in love with and married one of his schizophrenic patients, Nicole. The book chronicles their marriage and life in Europe. It's Scott's most autobiographical novel. At the end of the book Nicole learns to separate her identity from Dick and end her dependence upon him. She divorces Dick for another man. The doctor had finally cured his patient--not with his treatment but with his distance--and lost his life in the process. He'd stood by his wife for so long, and she was so willing to walk away and leave him alone to fight his own demons. It seemed so unfair to me. She ends up living a more fulfilling life, while the doctor flounders back in America and doesn't even keep in contact with his children.

It wasn't until I read Taylor's book that I understood the emotional depth of this novel. I think it's one of the single greatest signs of his love for Zelda. He borrowed greatly from their experience with mental illness and Zelda's own words--which kept her from using their experiences in her own creative work and was probably not the best thing a husband could do--but the ending shows his true hope. He wanted her to be cured, despite what he recognized as near impossible. I think Fitzgerald was acknowledging his role in their downfall, but wanting a different ending. While Zelda was eventually institutionalized for her illness, Scott still did all he could for her without completely destroying himself. A heavy drinker, he'd already ruined his chances for a long, happy life, but he felt that being her sole caregiver would be an even earlier demise. They needed each other though. It wasn't a one-sided help-meet. Their correspondence is touching toward the end of his life. I can't imagine seeing the woman who had been your muse drift into an incomprehensible shell of her old self. How helpless he must have felt. And although Zelda had delusions, she was very astute to her condition and reality. How frustrated and helpless she must also have felt. I can't even tell you how much I learned about love from their story.

“And in the end, we were all just humans...drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.” --F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

I believe the Fitzgeralds decided on their love throughout their entire lives. It didn't just swallow them up and take them for prisoners during the happy days as newlyweds, never to escape again. They continually chose each other despite the flaws they saw in the other and themselves. Their rise and subsequent fall had to have intricately bounded them together forever. Love isn't enough to save us, but I think it's a catalyst. For good and bad. Ultimately we have to save ourselves--a great love story isn't enough. 

Staunch Characters

I am now obsessed with the Beale family of Grey Gardens.

You need to watch this cult-classic documentary from the 1970s! I was blown away. Here's the basic run-down: Big Edith and Little Edie lived a privileged life as rich beauties in their younger years, but later found themselves in squalor and poverty in their East Hampton mansion. You get the sense that these women are immensely educated and created a unique, empowering paradigm. Little Edie even had a brief run as a cabaret dancer when she was in her 60s. [Late-bloomers around the world applaud.] I was especially struck by the scene I posted above. Don't you love the way she speaks? The diction and word choice are superb.

Am I a staunch woman?

Not yet. I can't even bring myself to call myself a woman. I'm still a girl...occasionally a lady.

The other day I had this daydream of me at 101 showing my posterity pictures of my life and memories in the form of grandmotherly trinkets. They were so impressed by the personality I'd become and the things I'd done. And I could feel my future thoughts as that woman. You silly kids. I didn't come into my own until I was triple your age. Until I'd sparred with life and learned to love. Learned to let myself be loved.

My personality profile is INFP. The nickname for this type is often "the idealist" or "the dreamer." Sure this means I have high ideals, but it also means I'm willing to work to attain what I feel is possible and to help others reach their potential too. One of the online tests lists fictional and real people that could have the same personality type. Guess who was on my fictional character list?

E.T.

I'm basically an alien. What's stauncher than an extraterrestrial? There's hope for me yet.