If I can only imagine the snow swept streets of 1920 America when Paul gave Marion a copy of This Side of Paradise that Christmas morning and what she  must have thought as she unwrapped the ribbon and thin paper of his gift and  touched those lovely pages with her fingertips while Fitzgerald, even then was  traveling toward some palmy Hollywood studio backlot, his hands wringing  and desperate, trying to write a fine line or two and my god, how it all ended  up for him after the glory and Gatsby and who knows what happened to Marion  and Paul, how their lives were shaped by unforeseen tides and how it happens  that on this sunny Wednesday morning in March in Florida, 86 years later, I take  their book off the shelf and touch Fitzgerald’s pages wanting to write something, anything this morning and know another Christmas looms – even as the roses & geraniums outside my window proclaim paradise.