Yellow Cocktail Music

I'll not be blogging this week as I'm preparing for birthday celebration party at the weekend. A Jay Gatsby party to get me in the mood.

"There was music from my neighbour's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars...

fizz 

... enough coloured lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.

lights

... already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colours, 


...the bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter...

chatter

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music...


Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word.


....The party has begun." F.Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Never let him go

In amongst all that angst there was the hope of this....

'But some day I'm going to find somebody and love him and love him and never let him go.' F. Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night
ruffled

Sometimes

Sometimes you read a passage at it speaks of times past. Sometimes of hoped for future times. Sometimes for struggles and joys you're experiencing at that moment. And sometimes it speaks to you for just that moment. It's brief. But in that moment it makes you Stop. Pause. Reflect. Re read. And then go onto the next moment...

'He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice for your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.' F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

smile

I read this and it spoke to me for that moment. Seven am on Tuesday 21st September 2010. And then it was time to step off the train and I started my day with a smile.

A Profound Promise

Paris in July is soon to draw to a close and so one final quote is needed. We're off to a wedding at the weekend. Is this not the joy which shines from the bride as she walks towards her groom.....

'She smiled at him, making sure that the smile gathered up everything inside her and directed it towards him, making him a profound promise of herself...' F. Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night

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Scars

Life isn't always sunny, rosy, full of love and romance. Sometimes it hurts and we suffer. In those moments I tend to cry but the words in novels have put my feelings into some sort of coherent thought and have helped me.

'One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.' F.Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night

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That's a story dress

'That's a story dress.'
F.Scott Fitzgerald

When I first thought about using this quote I'd imagined a picture of a fantastic dress, maybe one of Vivienne Westwood's creations. And then over at HipHip GinGin I saw this dress by Bibhu Mohapatra. Now this is a story dress. And why? It will be worn on so many occasions. To dear friends' weddings, maybe out on a date, to the theatre, pretty much anytime of year. On the French Riviera where this novel is set. It will be worn many times and so there will be so many stories attached to that dress.

It's a story dress.

What's your story dress?

Traditions

'It was a tradition between them that they should never be too tired for anything, and they found it it made the days better on the whole.' F. Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night

This is my kind of tradition and explains the busy, and very wonderful weekend we've just had. This looks like a party not to be too tired for.

And here's Hotel Eden Roc, where some of this novel is set. Oh to imagine the parties there.

How was your weekend?