Is there a part of life that lies beyond the apparent? Have I been wrong to persistently, bitterly deny it?
Are lives that ended still going on someplace, like the overpayment of a utility bill: money that finds its way back, an unexpected check in the day's mail—a beloved character, familiar energy, orphaned from its old form, randomizing the tides like the moon, putting the compass out of whack?
I am too hard on myself.
I prepared for loneliness and received it. And now life goes on like a party across the hall. I smell the beer and the onion dip.
Life asks for a certain generosity, a small down payment of faith. My flawless suspicion, a talent for mockery, didn't really come in handy, though I kept them laughing in college.
The best thing you can do for someone else is to believe him: "So-and-so was right about that" is the truest sort of fame. I think what we ask from the past is validation. Unfortunately, it isn't coming.
So we beat on with Fitzgerald, into this confusing, flawed middle age, a gallery of withholdings and hesitations—a chilly place.
A couple of old photographs will have to suffice for warming the heart, and perhaps the idea, gingerly conceived, that we will receive a little generosity, too.
