Time travel - 2013 version

I haven't been blogging for ages, and I'm blaming that on the Brits.  I bought into Acorn TV online and I'm now the addicted fan of Foyle's War and the Forsyte Saga and I can see myself going for a lot of the mystery series that are available. Sadly, I sit in the papasan I usually read in, grab the laptop and earphones, a glass of wine and a pear, and I'm good for ages.  I don't think I've had an experience like it before---it's very relaxing, very private and commercial-free, so it's almost like a reading-binge but I can't hear the household background noise.

I'm also reading The Great Gatsby again, and although I'm enjoying it and imagining myself in chiffon dresses on West Egg beaches, I'm having collateral character imaging problems.  Sometimes when I'm reading about Gatsby, he looks like I first imagined him, a James Deanish type but in blazer and flannels, other times he's very Redford-looking, and yesterday he looked like Leonardo DiCaprio, but the image wavered and turned to smoke, as I haven't yet seen that movie.  Daisy has always looked like a friend I had in school---lovably ditzy but able to blur that with her delicate features and pale blonde hair. I haven't yet got a stable mental image of any other characters, even though I'm on my fourth reading and have seen the 70s movie a couple of times. Strangely, or maybe not so much, I have been thinking a lot about the movie Midnight in Paris.  I especially like these two Great Gatsbyish photos:

   There is something very appealing to me about that era, and especially New York and Paris in those days.  When we play that game about which would you choose if you knew you couldn't come back, the past or the future?, I always see myself as a neighbour of F. Scott and Zelda.   What about you?