Layers

I watched Gatsby. Didn’t think I’d get anything new out of it, but, although the movie wasn’t that great, something hit me hard in this film that didn’t when I read the book (again) about a year ago, nor when I watched the ’74 version about 5 years ago.

I just watched it but I’m banging my brains trying to remember exactly what it was that hit me. Some frightening similarity in Gatsby that I didn’t realize I had. A deeper truth that I stumbled on as I left the theater but which I quickly left behind me with each step I took towards my home. 

I’d seen similarities between Gatsby and myself before, but not to this degree. And I though could learn (thought I had learned) from his mistakes, and so altered my expectations, but see now that I’m actually trying to beat him at his own game...at least with his grand sense of hope...not the money part.

I think part of the reason this truth vanished from me so fast is that I realized I need to leave this...leave the past...leave 2046. I thought I had. But somehow seeing this film made me realize I hadn’t. (No...I must have left it. The movie merely reminded me of it.)

I’ve been living in the present for a few years now, but it’s not getting me very far into the future. Like trying to shoot a basket flat footed. The future is projected from the past. So I can’t leave the past. The vision I have now of the future is a result of the past. And this vision I have, this grand sense of hope...it may be fiction, but I can’t seem to let go of it. 

This isn’t even the truth I realized I was walking home. Or not quite. The idea is evolving too quickly. I can’t keep up with it by typing. No, no. Something really hit me today. I’m going to go digging for it again. Find where I stumbled on it. Not try to brush myself off and move on. It may be another carpet I’ll have to pull from underneath me, but I’ll benefit from it. I’ll find a deeper truth about myself.