The Fitzgerald Kinship

“…Blue and gigantic — their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald and I share the same birthday. I grew up watching The Great Gatsby. I devoured the book at age 12. I loved the cover and even tried to do my makeup like it, imitating the green light dripping down the face like a tear.

I had an experience last weekend that brought back the gigantic eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg back into my mind. For three hours I discovered sights and feelings and talked at length about them. I was the manager of all this beauty in the world. I had to catalogue it for posterity. I drew, I wrote.

4:40 AM, 4/24/10. The Sad Eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg
I see them. I saw them on Delancey Street in 2003. They drew me onto the street, advertising Triangle Optical. Black glasses on a yellow sign with a big red O-P-T-I-C-A-L in case the point wasn't made. But they were lifeless, eyeless.
I saw the eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg looking at me in the mirror every morning. My not-yellow spectacles passed over a nose that certainly existed. The eyes were full of life.
I saw the eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg staring back at me after my first flashback. The face they sank into was not mine. The body wasn't. It wasn't May 26, 2005 but September 24th, 2004. Nothing was as it seemed. The eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg caught me from store windows and makeup counter mirrors as I ran from imagined deaths during panic attacks. The eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg were certainly alive, but how aware were they?
Just now I saw the eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg regarding me from the mirror. The pupils engulfed the iris. In the early morning light objects still held an impossible magic lost since childhood. The face, certain to exist and wonderfully touchable, held a slightly parted smile full of a gentle ecstasy in drinking in the experience. The fog enveloped the landscape outside. If I wanted to I could have walked on it and slept.
The sad eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg are not imaginary. Their retinas are life-sized. They pass over the nose of a woman at least twice a day. The eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg belong to me--Erin E. Rinker, age 19 and 7 months.