Things Past

Have you read the 3,000 page tome "À la recherche du temps perdu" ("Remembrance of Things Past" or "In Search of Lost Time"), Marcel Proust's venerable masterpiece?  O.K. Have you ever tried?  I've tried, and I've never made it past the first 30 pages.  This is a terrible confession, I know, but I couldn't stand it.  Now here comes the part you must not tell Q, for I've made fun of him for many years anytime he mentioned the author--I started listening to it last night.  Something made me call it up on YouTube.  Maybe I'll know what, precisely, later.  But oh, my. . . I was captivated.  It is (to me) so much better having it read to you.  I find this YouTube version quite pleasing (link).  

I must listen early on, though, before too many cups, for it is easy, of course, to fall asleep like a child being read to at bedtime, as it is impossible not to close your eyes in order to listen and let the action and images of the novel play upon your inner eyelids like a magic lantern show.  I've only just started and have listened to a mere half hour, probably less than those 30 pages I have read before, but I am excited to listen more.  

Temps perdu.  It is much better to say it in French, non?  For time can't be lost, can it, being a relationship between two things?  Remembering, of course, is certainly problematic, for memories are. . . well, my dissertation research was on just that, and I've read too many things to recall just now.  And there is the proof in that pudding.  

Or is it "putting"?  I can't remember.

Remembrances, however, are highly and often wildly inaccurate.  And yet, as illustrated by that most memorable film, "Blade Runner," memories shape us and give our lives meaning.  Detective Deckard, sitting at the piano, looking through old photos--is he human, or are those the false memories of a replicant?  

"You people wouldn't believe the things I have seen."

But when we die, all those memories disappear. . . "like tears in the rain."

Unless we record them.  As Salter says, "the one who writes it keeps it."  The one, I say, who photographs it, too.  

As you know, I'm a bit of an amateur archivist.  I keep everything.  The other day, after a certain reverie, I scrolled through the voicemail I have kept on my phone to hear a voice from long ago.  I found one and activated it.  

Oh, no!!!!

It was a mean message as was the next one and the next.  That voice, contemptuous and prosecuting.  I never got to a sweet one, of which, I hope, there are many.  Memory can have quite a filter.  And yet, I can't imagine cutting off such an important part of a personal past, just trying to lose the memory of someone you have loved.  

Music, of course, is exceptional at triggering memories.  Here is a text I received two days ago. 

"Hey, Boss! I just heard this song in a commercial and thought of you. ❤️ Let's do lunch soon."

Here is the song.

The text came from my replacement at the factory, twice removed.  I love that she and others still call me "boss" in tribute because I never pretended to be one.  We had both heard the music used in something, a commercial, probably. . . and both loved it.  But the memory--which I shared with her--that the song triggered in me was of my best friend, Tommy, and I, unable to decipher the last lines of the song, singing, "Look out the bull's ass, look out the bull's ass. . . " in delighted confusion.  Listen for yourself and maybe you'll be delighted, too.  

As I've mentioned, I'm watching the Netflix series, "Vikings," just now, and in last night's episode the Northmen were trying to invade Paris.  Paris at that time consisted of a walled fort on Ile de Cite, one of two natural islands there on the Seine, the other being Ile St. Louie where, you will remember, I stayed not so long ago.  It is also the site of the city's oldest standing bridge, the Pont Neuf.  Watching the show brought all of this to mind.  And over the years. . . many, many years. . . I have kissed three women on that bridge, one just at midnight as we gazed across the sparkling nighttime water at the Cathedral Notre Dame.  

But which one?  Who did I kiss at midnight?

Memory can be a treacherous thing.  

Perhaps it was two who I kissed there.  

No matter.  None of it worked out.  

Today I will return to "The Remembrance of Things Past" with much enthusiasm.  It will probably take me a month or more to listen to it all.  Much more, in all likelihood.  Probably a year.  Or maybe I'll tire of it completely.  Especially if Proust begins recounting his dreams.  Oh, yes. . . for the dreams of others are so terribly and awfully boring.  

Unless, of course. . . one tells them masterfully.