I finished Tender is the Night on the patio of my favorite reading coffee shop in New Orleans. It's the one across the street from Lafeyette Cemetery #1. As I finished the final hundred pages, I downed cup after cup of spearmint tea. This tea, once I've inhaled its aroma, once I've touched the cup to my lips, always rushes me back to my stint in Morocco; I remember the long rectangular room that was "mine" for a bit in a small home in the Atlas Mountains, the majesty of my host-family's palace-like home in Rabat, and a momentary and reductive (yet gloriously beautiful) glimpse into a cultural spirit that electrified me. My memories of that place are so strong.
As I came to the end of the book, a group McGhee School students gathered around a table next to mine. They were five girls, all probably around 14 years old, come to "Still Perkin'" to enjoy hot chocolates and iced teas before their parents were to pick them up. They were excruciatingly loud and obnoxious... at first, I had a very hard time focusing on my Fitzgerald as they giggled one minute and engaged in screaming arguments over what had, to one or the other, "just been a little offensive" about something some girl or boy did at school the next. I am riding this Fitzgerald train pretty hard right now, so I took extra offense to the intrusive, loud, and annoying gaggle. I heard them discuss boys, I heard them say awful things to one another, I heard them hurt each other, I heard them laugh with each other, I heard them be hurt by one another...
It was an unpleasant reminder for me of the times I experienced in middle school. Sometimes my memories of those days are beautiful, sharply conveying a gorgeous life I once lived. Other times (like these), though, I am reminded of the ignorance and naiveté that leads young people do and say terrible things to one another. At first, I thought: whatever. These girls are going to fuck up, they're going to hurt each other and other friends / be hurt, but they will learn and yadda yadda. But I was pissed that I had to endure their moment-to-moment life lessons while attempting to enjoy my final moments with Tender is the Night.
And that was what started me on "memory." Of course, everyone grows up knowing the old sayings that demand one not live in the past, not to wallow, and to make every effort to enjoy the present as it is happening. Some choose to live in the past, and some don't. But increasingly, lately, here in New Orleans, I've noticed myself living in the past. Surly, I tell myself, it's because I'm in a new place, because I'm in unfamiliar territory... because I'm scared, because I'm unaccustomed, because I'm naive. Sure, there are the gorgeous moments of living in the present, dancing recklessly on Canal Street to a previously unheard brass band blowing the roofs off of the New Orleans established and contemporary Bourbon Street alike... but then there are moments when I miss my dog, Dude. When I miss the comfort of knowing that my parents are close by... the comfort of friends, of alliances, of the built as opposed to the plans to build.
There is a transition from past to present that is impossible to define. I am the same person today (despite all of the more obvious growths and changes) that I was when I was in 8th grade, the same age as these girls sitting at the table across from me. My brain worked then, and it is still the same brain now, and I am still Kevin Klein. I can lay out for anyone the "details" of why I'm a better man now than I was a boy then, why I'm stronger, why I'm improved, why I'm more secure, why anything... but there is no escape from myself, no matter how hard sometimes I try. With images of the past, sometimes we see more clearly the images being drawn in the present. The transition from past-self to present-self is sometimes kind, sometimes turbulent, and the recognition of present-self is sometimes victorious, sometimes unbearable. But from this we can gather that the transition from past to present comes from a clear idea of ourselves in the past and a different idea of ourselves in the present... two easily distinguishable entities that, when contrasted with one another, shine as their unique entities.
But what happens when the transition is not clear? What happens when the past self and the present self are palpably and unbearably different, and yet a transition between the two is unnoticed? What if it is not only unnoticed, but apparently non-existant? Is it the world around us changing?
The decadence of the jazz age in America is commonly known. Fitzgerald lays out for us in The Beautiful and Damned and The Great Gatsby a number of individuals whose paths shift from gloriously raging rivers to hardly drifting streams: psychologically, emotionally, mentally, physically. Some claim that Tender is the Night is his most tragic novel. And, though I haven't read them all, it is definitely the most tragic of the ones I've read. And not because the characters endure the hardest fall from grace, not because the most horrendous and unknown forces act to destruct our heroes. In fact, it is for nearly the polar opposite reason that Tender is the Night is so tragic: The characters endure personal shifts, personal changes--in preference of love, taste, personality, habits, addictions, etc. --but they do so in an unrecognizable way. The action of the book is almost non-existent: we know that these characters have endured something tragic, but we don't know where or when... we can't pinpoint the personal transitions, we only know that they've occurred. But without evidence of the transitions, of the events, of the tragedies, how can we know that these tragedies are real? That is to say, without clear and distinguished understandings of these characters' past and present selves, how can we truly connect with their tragedy?
I think the answer is: we cannot. And this is why Tender is the Night excels as a tragedy. This is why I read the vague, surely not extreme closing lines of the book with simultaneous feelings of repulsion and malaise.
Whereas in The Beautiful and Damned we have two "great" characters, skyscrapers among shacks, eventually crushed by the inevitable grip of their decadence, in Tender is the Night we have two skyscrapers who are devoid of climax altogether; the story is not one of loss or dismay, not is it one of greatness and gain... it is a story devoid of its own characteristics; a portrait of those who are great drifting slowly, calmly, peacefully into nothingness. And it is precisely this lack of action, I think, that makes Tender is the Night so painfully tragic.
Has this sort of unnoticeable transition happened in me? I grew up with "so much promise" and "so much potential," and I'd hate to think that these things have left me... rather, I'm sure that they haven't. And yet, I've made this transition into a life where I work every day and live every day in relative obscurity. Yes, I live in a fantastic and magical city, one filled with emotion and resilience and love. And yet, I find myself standing alone on my balcony listening to the melancholy music of choice, watching my past self evolve into the present, and I'm confused; I'm confused about my own existence, about my own abilities, about my own intentions, about my own passions, about myself. Who is to say I'm not the next thriving genius, waiting impatiently in line behind others for my turn at recognizing my own life as something wonderful? But who, though, is to say that I'm not another victim of time, another victim of the action-less, climax-less demise that befell my heroes in Tender is the Night?
Call this doomed valiance, call it cliche... but if what I've said already has inklings of truth, I am either forced down this road or doomed to a depressed and invisible sort of decay:
I love the fact that my memories live with me. I love the fact that the gaggle of middle school aged girls at my coffee shop reminded me of myself in a different time, that the memories of myself in NW Africa are centered around a self that still exists. I am thrilled that I live a North America away from a family from whom I'm no more than a trivial yet monumental reminiscence removed... I am myself in Morocco, I am myself in middle school, I am myself in adolescence, I am myself now. And in ten years, I might be able to say the same thing about those "Kevins" as well as the "Kevins" that will live from now on...
There is something beautiful about the fact that not only will we continue our lives and create new memories, but also the fact that we someday will pass on. Both of those facts live with us eternally, happy of them or not, conscious of them or not, and it is up to us to find the beauty in the midst of what appears to be nothing.
It isn't nothing. In the same way that Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night is not nothing, our temperate drifts through our own lives, thrilling and humdrum moments alike, are not nothing.
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