My Rendezvous with the Careless People

                Fitzgerald portrays a cast of characters in “The Great Gatsby,” as well as his short story, “Winter Dreams” as a people so enchanted by the prestige attribute of life in high society,  that they lose the value of humanity in the royal ambiance of America high class. They are a careless people, as asserted by Nick. However, careless people entranced by the flickering momentum of life does not seclude itself to the wealthy; it permeates throughout the factions of income into the “devil may care” who allot themselves to the party, and not the breathing transposition of life. They are in corporations, streaming crowds at concerts, raising glasses at night clubs. And, for a crisp inhale, I found myself amongst the careless people.

                A six year retreat brings us back to the beginning.  The twenty-one birth burned out into the hallowed night of September’s tremble into the fall.  I met them through a mutual friend; I met him. As an observer by nature of being; I watched eagerly at their reproach for the conventions of morality, at least the morality I latched onto. They went from one relationship into the next, often intermixing lovers in transition from one heartbreak to the next. They were local musicians; lovers of art and gobblers of all things intoxicating. They cheated one moment, and spoke of abiding and unwavering love the next.  They used the world and the people closest to them in such a way as to belittle the idea of a strangers kindness.  They never seemed to care for anything other than the excitement of the moment, but with the domino of dramatic tales, I suppose those moments eclipsed the other until the blindness became sight.  I saw them all as careless, except him. 

                He seemed indifferent to the whims of those surrounding, somehow superior, or it was his insistent attention to me that I overlooked his misgivings.  I showered the seed of a chance into the malformed bloom of a thorny bush with no flowers.  A crushing decision in retrospect, but when you are surrounded by a careless people; you often give shape to their shadow. 

                He spoke a lot of honor, but honored nothing. The admiration transpired through the years into a lofty transgression, seething life on the prospect of furthering into beating romance.  Yet, the void of a careless people, who endured unto just one careless person, leaves the un-satiating ambivalence of something that might be. It is there, hungering cowardly at the infinite idea of letting it all go.  The shimmering gold that glints from the depth of a tunnel is what keeps us mining, and I kept hoping that I could imprint on the intangible.

                Sitting here, just a day after the realization of the destruction a careless person leaves in the wake of my careful heart, I understand.  I hated Fitzgerald’s stories for some time, until I realized I was a part of them. We all are.