Turns out Joe Kennedy Jr.’s biggest mistake was underestimating the hold the 1920s has on Lacey. Both Harold Loeb and Louis Hill Junior are very much characters from the 1920s. So was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Well actually it was that he cheated and maybe he really wasn’t the man that God intended for Lacey to spend eternity with… but after watching Harold Lloyd for TikTok, Lacey realizes that there’s something that men from that generation more than men from any generation, she’s a part of, seem to understand.
It’s brokenness; they understand the brokenness of her heart. Lem starts to, but doesn’t quite grasp it yet and she hopes that he does. She hopes he’s 10 steps ahead of her in understanding the problem.
Space Song by Beach House plays. The eyes of of God are watching…
“If she’s meant to be with our Harold there isn’t a problem, but then I understand her far better than most people do.” says Zelda Fitzgerald. “If she’s meant to be with Michael, then he needs to outdo Scott at what Scott does best. If she’s meant to be with Lem, then he needs to understand whatever it is that JP understands, and it might scare him far more than he’s prepared for. If she’s meant to be with Louis Louis needs to find some way to explain to Lacey that there really is no one better in the entire universe for her than him and vice versa. …Regardless, something isn’t right. You’re not imagining things Lacey.”
It’s too awful.
“You’re right, Lem doesn’t understand and JP thinks it’s that Lem doesn’t love you enough or is lying about what happened with his son and that might not be true.” says Harold Lloyd to Lacey.
“I can’t understand how Lem doesn’t get her incredible suffering because I get it. Only Ted really ever understood that same thing from a first person perspective out of all of my children if anyone ever did. And that’s probably because it’s a part of my personality that I kept incredibly hidden and yet Lacey knew that it existed the instant that she knew I existed. Rose saw it as weakness and it isn’t. It isn’t weakness. It’s emotion. David hated me, but both Saoirse and David are mine and it’s like that famous saying that you hate things in other people that remind you of yourself. … I wasn’t suicidal because I didn’t let myself be. But truth be told I was probably clinically depressed most of my life. …There was far more depth to me than I ever let anyone see. I am not necessarily Lacey’s soulmate, but we did fall in love very briefly for a reason.” says J. P. Kennedy. “I could never figure out how to make sense of evil and good, because good didn’t make me happy. I loved Rose and yet I couldn’t stand her at the same time. I really couldn’t stand being her husband. But I couldn’t divorce her. I just couldn’t and yet making myself happy was evil. It was like rotting out your teeth. I didn’t teach my children to be happy. I taught them to be narcissistic and weak, and I hate that I did that.” He cries. “I understand Lem that sometimes you can try your hardest and really, it’s just your damnedest. Did you ever try your hardest to such a degree and find out that it wasn’t enough when it really only meant that the only thing left was God?” And at that he stumbles away in tears on the sandy beach.
Turns out that no one else so for Joe Jr. and maybe Harold Lloyd truly understand what Lacey is feeling. Michael doesn’t care Louis is concerned. He’s also offered eternity to Lacey in the last few days… But Lem refuses to give up. He is, however, scared by what he doesn’t know.
Did any of the Kennedy boys experience this? No. Did any of the Kennedy girls? No. It’s rather unusual unfortunately.
What is it? It is the reason why Lacey worries that she’s reincarnated from a woman who lost her husband in World War I. It’s a feeling of loss and separation that is profoundly shocking.
“I experienced it probably most of my life. It isn’t some thing that you experience easily just with death, although that can be a beginning of the experience.” says Joe Sr.. “It’s just one of the many emotions that Illuminati should exist don’t understand at large, and they reassign it to some other emotional set that isn’t at all Lacey and actually other people in her life have done the same thing and it’s part of the reason why she’s so misunderstood and alone. The British have a grasp of it in the culture itself. EM Forrester wrote about it F Scott Fitzgerald had a sense that it existed hair lobe experiences it but hasn’t processed it yet even in death, seemingly… The Queen of England before she passed, had a sense of it as well, of course, so did Princess Margaret, I would say, even Diana understood. It’s a feeling of coldness and profound helplessness that the English as much as they may have some insight don’t have a word for.”
Burn The Witch by Radiohead plays.
“Pete in Mad Men knows when he says, ‘I have nothing!’ He’s speaking our language, he’s saying our heart. …Don refuses to accept that that’s life and the writers of the show themselves don’t seem to realize that Don is profoundly deceptive first and foremost to himself. They begin to grasp it and grapple with it when they make him contemplate suicide. But he doesn’t kill himself and if Lacey and I were in his shoes, we would’ve far more seriously contemplated it. Maybe Lem lacks a sense of self awareness of how-Lem how you’re affecting anyone else…because you had the stupidest life I’ve ever seen.” yells Joe Sr.. “I have seen Lacey cry over you and if you really weren’t gay at all and in love with my son, who probably was gay and in love with you, how do you not yet grasp what you’ve done?!? I can’t stand it!!! And let me tell you something the fact that she still loves you. …Do you have any idea how lucky you are??! …I would love for her to still be in love with me and be an ounce as forgiving of my stupidity and weakness as she is of your stupidity and weakness, because boy were you stupid!”
Thank You by Dido plays.
“And the thing is Lacey doesn’t feel anything other than exactly what Joe would feel in her shoes and Joe Sr. sees that because he’s dead. And it makes Lem jealous, because he assumes that they have a secret understanding between them, which makes Joe think that Lem is lying to Lacey about some secret understanding he has with someone else. When in truth, there is no one else it’s just that he can’t understand what Joe and Lacey are both feeling.” says Scott Fitzgerald. “And actually, it’s important note that Joe was close to his mother growing up and it’s possible that Lacey and Joe’s mother have some personality traits in common and that’s part of how he understands her and part of how he understands himself.” He thinks. “Lacey isn’t as domineering, though as him or his mother. Of course she can be in charge, but she’s not domineering.”
Did Carolyn, JFK Junior‘s wife have some of that in her personality? Yes, she did very slightly. Jackie is fascinated by it, but it scares her, and she becomes very childlike but it does fascinate her. Joe knows that part of his father as being just dad who loves him which could be part of the reason why he assumed Lacey was still in love with him when she wasn’t.
“Lem don’t lose Lacey if it baffles you just let yourself be baffled!” warns Scott.
And Harold Loeb Harold doesn’t care. Harold is certain that there is no emotional experience that he cannot fathom if he tries hard enough. And Lem assumes that Lacey knows that he’ll try to understand, very foolishly.
“Me not understanding what it is that you’re experiencing is the punishment for what I did wrong. It the lies that I told myself that I was fine that I could be happy and that I wouldn’t hurt anyone. …Because I couldn’t imagine myself being with someone like you. I couldn’t imagine there was someone like you who could exist. You didn’t seem possible because I am not God and I couldn’t imagine you. I just saw myself and my flaws and I only imagined someone who I could reject or we could reject me. I didn’t imagine someone who would love me the way that you can and do. Nor someone I could love as much as I love you. I didn’t understand what love was. I didn’t understand that I could hurt someone by not taking better care of myself as a man.” says Lem.
“Well that’s not what it is that she’s experiencing, and that could all very well be true and that’s wonderful for her, but what she’s experiencing as far more dark. And in God there’s light, but what she sees, and experiences is either Hell or the closest thing to Hell that a Christian can experience on Earth. And how she deals with it is by trusting that God is good, and that He exists, because she hears Him when birds sing in the sunshine and when the wind blows. That is how fundamental and bare-bones she is, and if you can’t grasp that I don’t know what else to say. There is no ‘bright light and dark shadow’ and as someone who’s dead, you should understand that.” says Scott. “It’s just on and on and on and then there’s only God to save us from actual Hell.”
“I’m not going let you get away with escaping from me. Even if you’re just trying to be nice.” says Lem to Lacey. “Ever. Only God can alter it. And I doubt He wants to.”
“That’s only worthwhile if you mean it.” says Lacey.
He smiles and cries. Turns away.
“I mean it.” he says. “You’re not boring. Or tiring. Or depressing. I’m not either. We’re both just…what we are.”
More later.
Keen to Cross the Pond 