Zelda Fitzgerald Was A Flying Fish.

I will not begin this post with an apology for my absence.

If you humor me for a moment, allow me to promise you that there are currently several drafts in my post columns which I tried on numerous occasions to squeeze out.

Both written weeks apart, both with a few truly honest sentences.  Mostly they're overtaken by excess verbiage and unnecessary tone.  I squeezed and I squeezed and I tried so very hard to make the words come, but I just didn't have any. I wanted to come back to this space, I wanted to experience the vulnerability and the gentle acceptance. But I had nothing.

Months and months have passed in silence.

No posts, no prose, no journal entries, no half-conscious notes scribbled on scraps of paper.  Just white noise.  The sound of my computer keys clacking away at work, the labored snores from my short-snouted puppy, the crinkling sound of unwrapping dozens of icy hot patches.

I was tapped. Today, however, I seem to have been given another chance.

A few days ago, I watched a deliciously vibrant episode of BBC's Blue Planet in which David Attenborough was movingly narrating the lifespan of flying fish.

This very unique specimen of the ocean is considered important, and rare, because it is constantly hunted by almost all of the ocean's greatest predators.  Marlins, sailfish, larger species of tuna, varieties of whales, most medium-sized sharks, all of them chase, track, prey upon these beautiful little creatures, who spend their entire life cycle fleeing from the murky threats behind them. Their constant vigilance, if you will, (forgive me) allows them the unique opportunity, however, to experience periodic moments of glorious rest in which they burst forth from the watery depths and soar over the surface of the sea. For those few seconds, they are able to forget their predatory followers which haunt every stroke of fin.

All of creation chases after those who are born with the ability to fly.

I am reminded by this of a book I am currently reading, which, in total transparency, I just bought today (but am already almost 100 pages into) which is a biographical study on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald.

A name which, I'm sure, is unknown and unrecognized by many- upon which I cannot pass any judgement or opinion.  I never paid her much mind in the past, either.

Zelda Fitzgerald was married for many years to a luminescent, naturally-gifted author prevalent in the 1920s:  Mr.  F.  Scott himself.

For the past four or five years of my life, I have had the deepest of emotional affairs in my mind with F. Scott Fitzgerald, a man who regrettably died almost 70 years ago.

I am of the opinion that F.S.F is one of the greatest literary voices of the 20th century.  Topped only by Ernest Hemingway, by most literary standards, but I prefer Fitz's writing miles above Hemingway's.  This can possibly be attributed solely to his expansive use of the word 'nebulous' in all his writings. I digress.

I first took attention to Zelda Fitzgerald after watching Midnight in Paris a few nights ago. It felt sort of immediate, suddenly I was extremely distracted from the rest of the movie because I realized I knew so much about the writing of Fitzgerald, but I have never once paid any second thoughts to his life story, or the woman he spent 20 tumultuous years married to. Forget Owen Wilson and his terrible acting, who on earth was the real Zelda Fitzgerald?

Instinctively, I knew she must be some heroine in order to capture the calculating psyche and the roving heart of this particular writer.  I had to know more.

From what I've read and researched over the past 48 hours, it seems to me that Zelda was a very similar creature to one of those incandescent, flying osteichthyes. She was free. A wanderer of dimensions and realms and outside social norms and class structures. Constantly sought after by predators.  Quite possibly ruined by the most extravagant predator of all, after spending twenty years of her tragically short life by his side.  (She died in an sanitarium fire, locked inside one of the rooms.)

Judging by the sound of it, they were terrible for each other.  They destroyed one another, from the ground up.  Yet the love they had for each other is described in the most incomparable manner as being so crazily passionate, utterly obsessive, and enigmatically competitive to the greatest fault. It completely swallowed them whole.

I realize now that all of the words used in all of his books to describe these powerhouse female characters of unrivaled beauty, charm, otherworldly graces and tragic idiosyncrasies were born from the very heart and soul of his own wife whom he hated and adored all at once. He is renowned for writing his conversations with Zelda down word-for-word and recycling her verbatim phrases into his stories.

Then again, perhaps she wasn't so free after all.

I continued to ponder this woman's life as I ran an errand to Fred Meyers tonight to pick up gold fish crackers and lactose free milk.  (Such is the life of the unmarried, college-student aunt.)

The sun had just set and the world was awash between lingering daylight and forthcoming night.  It's supposed to be hot here tomorrow, upwards of 70 degrees, and you could smell the not-too-distant forecasted sunshine all over the fields, trees and neighborhoods of suburbia.

The opening notes of Hey Jude began to play from my car stereo; around and around the thoughts whizzed through my brain.  Flying fish, Zelda Fitzgerald, deep sea exploration, an often-imagined precious little boy named Jude, twilight in Spring and Summer, bioluminescence, new books, na na na na-na-na-na, travels to South Africa, feelings of writing, and memories of childhood all rotating together on a lazily circling carousel inside my mind.

"Let it out and let it in..."

These words washed over me and I sort of just smiled to myself.

I'm happy that I'm not the same type of woman that Zelda Fitzgerald was, even though sometimes I try to convince myself that navigating a man like F. Scott would be a fine accomplishment to have under my belt.

I'm happy that I am not one of those flying-fish-women, caught between two separate realities, morphed into one giant juxtaposition of constantly fleeing a looming something in the background.

I'm simply me, and I'm simply here, and there is a surplus of time ahead to accomplish all of my dreams.

I don't have anything to run away from.  I can simply let it out and let it in, continue to let it be, and walk confidently forward into whatever lies ahead in the nebulous expanse of blue and green and glittering creation.

And that is exactly what I plan to do.

Goodnight, lovers.